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“If you’re able, please stand.” Reading Exod. 4:1–9. “Thanks be to God!”
God has his ways of getting us out of our comfort zone. He calls to do things and to be things that take an immense amount of faith.
Sometimes to an outsider these callings appear really straight-forward. You grew up and went to college and now you’re starting a job. But it’s a job you don’t feel ready for. It’s a job that will require you to be a kind of person you’re not sure you can be. You’ve got a massive case of imposter syndrome.
Or you grew up and fell in love with someone and then you got married. To an outsider, it all looks like the common path to take. But maybe you grew up in home where your parents didn’t have a strong marriage or they weren’t Christians. You didn’t have a clear model of what a Christian husband and a Christian wife is supposed to do. Being a godly spouse feels beyond you.
And then maybe you have a child. Parenting is a calling that opens up a whole new set of challenges and responsibilities. Many of us didn’t grow up with models that showed us what it looked like to teach and train our children. The way you preach the gospel to your children in a loving environment. The way you integrate God’s Word into the daily life of the family. All of this can feel beyond you.
These callings—sometimes called “vocations”—in life can make us feel like we’re being called to enter a horse race, but we’re a foal, a baby horse, and we’re all legs and can barely walk.
Our basic response is, “I can’t do this.” What God is calling us to do feels impossible.
Our passage this morning will walk us through God’s call on Moses. Moses’s call was unique and historical in a way that ours isn’t. But how God speaks to and responds to Moses as he calls him has much to teach us about how God is with us in our own callings and vocations.
We’re in a series going through Exodus 1–15, Yahweh Our Deliverer. Last week we studied that name Yahweh and how God revealed it in Exodus 3. Everything is building toward the event when God delivers Israel from Egypt.
We’ll work through the passage in three parts: (1) Yahweh responds (4:1–17), (2) Moses returns (4:18–26), and (3) Israel rejoices (4:27–31). As we do, we’ll learn how God is with us in our callings and vocations.
In Exodus we’re at the point where God is calling Moses to be the deliverer of his people. God says in Exod. 3:10,
“Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” (Exod 3:10)
We think, well, of course. This is the great Moses. That’s not what Moses thought. Moses kept giving reasons why he wasn’t the right guy.
Each time, Yahweh Responds. Five times! He meets Moses right where he is:
Moses never said no, but he did reason with the LORD. He had an open conversation with the LORD without ever saying no.
That’s an example for us. Same as with Abraham and Jacob and King David and Jesus and Paul. All of them were honest with God. Struggling and not saying no.
When we get into our chapter, Exodus 4, Moses is really thinking through what is being asked of him. It is a heroic undertaking. Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s palace, so he knows the power of Pharaoh—who he is and what he is.
But what he hasn’t seen yet is who God is.
Let’s see how YAHWEH RESPONDS.
Moses says, “they will not believe me” (Exod 4:1). It’s a very reasonable response. Why would they believe that this fugitive is suddenly going to be their deliverer? Is a story about a burning bush really going to do it? “No, seriously, the bush was on fire but wasn’t consumed! I saw it, and I’m going to tell Pharaoh to let you guys go now.”
God gives Moses three demonstrations of power that are meant to add credibility to his words. They are called “SIGNS” (Exod 4:8–9). They are revealing something and pointing to something. Isreal’s God is the Supreme God!
First sign, Staff to serpent to staff (Exod 4:2–5).
At first glance, this seems like a dramatic magic trick. But in Egypt, the Pharaoh used the image of a cobra to symbolize his power and supremacy. Their crowns all had figures of cobras embedded into them. The cobra was also a symbol of the sun god Re.
The ability of Moses to take his staff, turn it into a serpent, and then turn it back into a staff was a statement. It was a declaration that Israel’s God could do with the Egyptian gods whatever he wanted.
This staff was certainly a basic shepherd’s staff. Maybe Moses had used it for years to take care of his father-in-law’s flock. But with the power of God, this staff was suddenly called “the staff of God,” a “staff” God could use for mighty deeds to accomplish his purposes.
Like us! Simple items that in the hands of God can do great things.
Second sign, hand to leprosy to cleansed hand (Exod 4:6–7).
Phil Ryken notes that leprosy at this time was “widespread” in Egypt. And the thing with leprosy is that it was “highly infectious and completely incurable.”[1]
In the Old Testament, if you had leprosy, the command of God was that a leprous person “shall live alone,” wear old clothes, and yell out, “Unclean, unclean” whenever anyone came near (Lev 13:44–46). It was a horrible disease to have.
But with this second sign, God is showing he has total ability to inflict someone with the disease—or immediately heal them. Whoever saw Moses do this would know that his God was a powerful God they didn’t want to offend.
And then the third sign, turning water from the Nile into blood (Exod 4:9).
This wasn’t turning the whole river to blood, but just some water that was taken from the Nile.
Again, the sign isn’t random. The Nile was the center of commerce, agriculture, and their food supply. It was irrigation and soil for their crops, and it was transportation for trade. Attacking the Nile was attacking their very lives.
These signs had a double purpose. On one hand, they were to give Moses credibility with the Israelites. On the other hand, they were to give him a hearing with Pharaoh and the palace as well.
So, that’s God’s first response to Moses. But there are two more.
Read Exod. 4:10 for Moses’s argument. “I am not eloquent” (v. 10). “Slow of speech and of tongue” is literally, “a heavy mouth and a heavy tongue.” Yahweh responds in Exod. 4:11–12 (Read).
“I WILL BE with your mouth” is the first part of the divine name, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exod 3:14).
And Moses’s last response is a desperate prayer: Exod. 4:13. This becomes the last straw. God at this point was angry. He’s angry, but he still provides for Moses.
Alec Motyer calls this God’s “anticipatory providence” (The Message of Exodus, 85). For God to provide at just this moment meant he anticipated the moment years in advance. The provision is Moses’s older brother Aaron. Read Exod 4:14–17.
God’s provision is both extraordinary—the miraculous signs—and it is ordinary. His ordinary provision is to send a person to help. Your own brother. God says, “I know that he can speak well” (Exod 4:14).
And then there’s the help that’s more about our faith in God: “I will be with your mouth.”
Like the words of Jesus to the apostles:
“And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12:11–12)
Application:
In all kinds of extraordinary and ordinary ways, God meets Moses exactly where he is to enable him to do what he’s being asked to do.
In that sense, Moses is like us. His calling is unique. But the way God equips him for his calling is similar to what God does for us. Sometimes he gives us a staff that turns into a serpent. Sometimes he sends our older brother to speak for us.
Read Exod. 4:18–26.
First, before he returns, he needs to take care of some family matters. He respectfully deals with his father-in-law Jethro and even receives a blessing from him.
There’s the detail about having his wife and children “ride on a donkey.” Moses is attending to their needs. It was a long journey from Midian to Egypt, and he gently brings them along.
It’s in some ways an unnecessary set of details about Moses dealing with his family. But it’s a reminder that even when we’re given a high and noble calling, we must attend to things at home.
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Tim 5:8)
Perhaps the ultimate example of this is Jesus dying on the cross for us.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:26–27)
There was never a higher calling than Christ dying for our sins. And yet even with that calling, Jesus attended to the needs of his earthly family.
As Moses Returns, there’s a second thing that speaks to us in our callings. The LORD reiterates what Moses is doing in lofty and important language. What Moses is doing is nothing short of delivering the very “firstborn son” of God himself. Read Exod. 4:22.
Israel for the first time is called “my firstborn son” (Exod 4:22). Right after that, “my son” (Exod. 4:23).
When we enter into our callings, this reminds us not to so reduce them to practical matters that we forget what’s really going on here.
Parenting can be like that. It’s so…daily. There are literally thousands of practical decisions you have to make:
But the calling to be a parent has a whole other dimension to it: You are involved in the eternal destiny of a soul that will live forever? Your child’s relationship with God is the most important aspect of his life. How’s that going?
The thousands of practical decisions can’t distract us from that eternal dimension to our parent.
Moses will go to Pharaoh, and he will say and do what he’s supposed to. But he can’t forget what’s really going on here: Yahweh is delivering his “firstborn son.”
And then as Moses returns is a third snapshot.
It’s a fascinating and unexpected moment. From out of nowhere we simply read that “Yahweh met [Moses] and sought to put him to death” (Exod 4:24). God is about to kill Moses! Why? Because Moses never circumcised his son.
Every son born to an Israelite (and any slave brought into the family) is to be circumcised. That’s part of the Abrahamic covenant.
“This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised….Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” (Gen 17:10, 14)
This was not a suggestion. It was a command of God made centuries before Moses. But it was still in effect for the people of God. It isn’t a command any longer. It’s part of the Old Testament laws that expired with the coming of Christ.
For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. (Gal 6:15)
But from Abraham until Christ was crucified, it was a command for the people of God to circumcise their sons. After that, it isn’t.
We’re not told how, but somehow Moses’s wife, Zipporah, realizes what needs to be done. She’s a woman of action. Moses is somehow unable to do this. Most commentators assume he was stricken with an illness that would kill him unless she acted. But we don’t exactly know.
She circumcises their son and then refers to Moses as, “A bridegroom of blood.” Before he was her bridegroom by choice and by affection. Now, he was her bridegroom through this unexpected bloody ceremony.
What does it teach? In whatever calling we’re given, obedience to God matters!
That lesson will keep being reinforced in Israel’s history. They are uniquely called by God and set apart by him. They are above all to believe in him and worship him. But in that relationship to him, obedience to him matters!
Obedience to him does not CREATE the relationship: God does that! Obedience to him does not even PRESERVE the relationship: God must do that, too!
But obedience to him is an essential part of the relationship.
Jesus said,
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)
Application:
In whatever we’re called to do:
Read Exod. 4:27–31.
Good to remember where we are in the story. Remember Exod. 2:23–25:
During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew. (Exod 2:23–25)
All of Exod. 3 and almost all of Exod. 4 happen without any of the Israelites in Egypt knowing it. They’re still praying. Still crying out. Still wondering, “How long, O Lord?” But the whole time their deliverer is being called and equipped and is traveling to save them.
The Gospel
That same thing is true for us in Jesus Christ. Our greatest need is for a solution to our sin problem. Whatever our practical problems, our greatest problem is our sin. This heart, this mind, this soul which is in rebellion against God.
It’s a problem because the punishment for this sin is eternal damnation. It’s a problem because it’s an impossible barrier between us and God.
At some point we realized our problem and we realized the one and only solution, which is faith in the name of Jesus Christ who died for sinners like us.
But once we realized our problem and what we needed to do, we also realize that God had provided our solution long before we even knew we needed it!
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)
Israel believes and rejoices
Moses opened the chapter by saying, “They will not believe me” (Exod 4:1). God had said they would believe you because of the signs (Exod 4:8–9). And here, Moses and Aaron “did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed” (Exod 4:30–31).
At this point “they bowed their heads and worshiped” simply because God had heard their prayers and was acting on their behalf. They were still slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh was still over them in a ferocious way. But now they were certain God had heard their prayers and he would soon act.
Application:
In whatever we’re called to do, we can know GOD IS WITH US! GOD IS AT WORK IN WAYS WE CAN’T EVEN SEE!
And yes, that should inspire us to “believe” and know “that the LORD has visited” us and “seen our affliction.”
And yes, that should inspire us to “bow our heads and worship”!
God is with us in our callings and vocations!
Recently we’ve heard of various situations connected to our church where these truths resonate.
Life is filled with times where we’re being called into something we don’t feel prepared for.
Our calling is different from what God gave to Moses. But we are to find grace in the same truths that Moses found grace in. God is with us. He hears us. He sees us.
Let us bow and worship.
Prayer and closing song
[1] Ryken, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory, PTW (Crossway, 2005), 110.
[2] On this, see also https://www.christiandaily.com/news/islamic-extremists-kill-christians-in-mass-shooting-at-funeral-in-jordan and https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ck87zlpzny15o
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