Lord, thank you for reminding me that You can use me mightily in your work. Thank you LORD for revealing to me your calling to me, that I start and run an evangelistic program to reach out to the youth. Just like Moses, you have given the authority and You will give me also the credibility. Thank you LORD that You have given me the mandate and the authority (Matthew 28:18-20), and that You promised that You will be with me all through out the way. Thank you LORD for this God-given calling.
Text: Exodus 4:1-5 New International Version
Signs for Moses
1 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” .jpg)
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2 Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A staff,” he replied.
3 The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.”
Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it.
4 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 it turned back into a staff in his hand.
5 “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.”
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Kizombo sat watching the campfire, pondering the great questions of his life. What have I accomplished? he thought. Too quickly the answer came back: Not much, really. He was back in the land of his birth, serving at the school his father had started deep in the rainforest. He was also trying to write his father’s powerful story of surviving two civil wars. Who am I to try to do all this? .jpg)
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Kizombo’s misgivings sound like those of Moses. God had just given Moses a mission: “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). Moses replied, “Who am I?” (v. 11).
After some weak excuses from Moses, God asked him, “What is that in your hand?” It was a staff (4:2). At God’s direction, Moses threw it on the ground. The staff turned into a snake. Against his instincts, Moses picked it up. Again, it became a staff (v. 4). In God’s power, Moses could face Pharaoh. He literally had one of the “gods” of Egypt—a snake—in his hand. Egypt’s gods were no threat to the one true God.
Kizombo thought of Moses, and he sensed God’s answer: You have Me and My Word. He thought too of friends who encouraged him to write his father’s story so others would learn of God’s power in his life. He wasn’t alone.
On our own, our best efforts are inadequate. But we serve the God who says, “I will be with you” (3:12).
By Tim Gustafson
COMMENTARY:
Exodus 3:1–4:17 tells how God called Moses to deliver His people from Egyptian bondage. Moses protested, giving various excuses for why he was unfit for the job. .jpg)
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He doubted his own identity and ability (3:11) and his lack of authority (v. 13). In chapter 4, Moses gave his third excuse: the lack of legitimacy and credibility (v. 1). Having been rejected by the Israelites forty years earlier (2:11–14), Moses argued that they wouldn’t believe that he was now divinely commissioned (4:1). To authenticate his commission, Moses was to offer three signs: a rod becoming a snake (vv. 2–5), his hands turning leprous (vv. 6–7), and water turning to blood (v. 9). These signs prefigured the realms of the plagues—blood (7:19), animals and insects (8:2–4, 16, 21; 9:3), and diseases (9:9)—that God would bring upon the Egyptians so that they too would know that He was the true God (7:5).
by K. T. Sim
FROM ME:
Lord, thank you for reminding me that You can use me mightily in your work. Thank you LORD for revealing to me your calling to me, that I start and run an evangelistic program to reach out to the youth. Thank you LORD that You have given me the mandate and the authority (Matthew 28:18-20), and that You promised that You will be with me all through out the way. Thank you LORD for this God-given calling.
Posted October 18, 2023
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