Exodus 4:1-26
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Transcript
My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. We're jumping right in to where we left off last week. Last week we began the calling of Moses and this is part two of that. So we're going to be in Exodus 4, which is on page 27 in your blue Bibles. We're going to be in the first 26 verses. So, we started off last week in chapter 3.
Moses is tending sheep in the wilderness. He comes upon Mount Horeb and then God calls out to Moses from a burning bush. And in this calling of Moses, God does a few things. He announces His plan. That He has seen the affliction of His people. He has seen that they've been in slavery for centuries.
And that He's going to bring them out of Egypt into the promised land. And He's going to use Moses to do it. He reveals who He is. Moses asks, what is your name? And He gives His personal name. I am who I am.
And we looked at that and the power and the mystery that is packed into that name. And He tells Moses that He's going to use them to lead them out of the promised land. They won't just leave the promised land empty handed. That He will loot the enemies. He will take from the Egyptians as they will give gold and jewels and clothing. In the midst of all this calling, we see a question that arises that starts to show that Moses has some doubts.
In verse 11 of chapter 3, Moses says, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? That Moses is focused on his weaknesses, on his inadequacies. And God is trying to help him see Moses. It's by my power. I'm the one who's going to be with you. It's going to be by my power that I bring the people out.
And we're going to see this continue into chapter 4. That Moses is going to continue to doubt. And God is going to continue to point to Himself. Moses is too focused on his weaknesses, on his inadequacies. He's too focused on himself. And he's not focused on what God is telling him.
That I will be with you. That I'm the one that is going to bring them out. That's going to be by my power. And we're going to see how God's response to Moses is incredibly helpful to us. We're going to see that God's redemption of His people and the obedience that He calls us to is only possible. It is only possible if we stop looking at ourselves and start looking to God.
Because we, like Moses, we make God far too small and ourselves far too big. So that's what we're going to see. Let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together. Lord, we ask that You would help us be present this morning. You'd help us receive the Word of God. And that we respond.
We respond in how You call us to. In faith and repentance and to worship and delighting in who You are. So God, I pray that You would do this in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so again. We're in the middle of this calling story.
We're picking right up where He left off. He just said, repeated His plan. I'm bringing them out of Egypt. I'm using you. They are leaving with jewels and gold and clothing. And then Moses answered, verse 1.
Moses answered, But behold, they will not listen. They will not believe Me or listen to My voice. For they will say, The Lord did not appear to you. So Moses, again, doubts. He says, What if they don't listen to Me? Which, absent from God, is a very reasonable question for Moses.
You've got to remember, Moses spent 40 years with one foot in the Egyptian royal family and another foot as a Hebrew. Okay? Not really belonging fully to the Egyptian royal family. Not a slave like the rest of his Hebrew brethren. Okay? So that's reasonable that they might have some doubts.
Also, he's been gone for 40 years. He's 80 at this point. I mean, he's presumed gone. Dead. Dead. And he's supposed to rock back up and say, The God of your forefathers appeared to Me.
And we're getting out of here. It's a very reasonable question. Absent from the Lord. But the Lord is with him. He's not absent. So it's not a reasonable question.
Moses is focusing on himself. He's made himself too big. He's made God too small. And God answers by displaying his power. So, pick it up in verse 2. It says, The Lord said to him, What is that in your hand?
He said, A staff. And he said, Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent. And Moses ran from it. So, again, context here. Moses is 80.
Okay? He's 80 years old. He probably uses that staff for more than just shepherding. It's probably some support. Okay? God says, Take that.
Throw it on the ground. He throws it on the ground. And it turns into a snake. And he does what has been instinctual for thousands of years. He runs. All right?
80 Years old. Geared up his loins. Haltail it out of there. He gone. Like, just not dealing with a snake. And, listen.
We're going to see this happen later in Exodus. The staff is going to turn to a snake again. The presence of Pharaoh. And that snake eats two other snakes. So, this is not a small snake. Think 10, 12 foot king cobra.
Big, scary looking snake. So, if you're afraid of snakes, you are in good company with Moses. And then it says, verse 4, But the Lord said to Moses, Put out your hand and catch it by the tail. So, he tells them, catch it by the tail. So, listen. If we were a crazy snake handling church, which, if you're new, disclaimer, we're not.
Okay? And I went and grabbed some snakes, took one, and threw it in the front row and said, Pick it up by the tail. What is implied in my request? A little bit of trust. I'm telling you to pick it up. It's not going to bite you.
Which, I learned a thing this week. That actually picking it up by the tail requires even more trust. Because that's not the way you're supposed to pick up snakes. Apparently, it's by the head. Okay? We have a teaching team, Isaac and Shep, on our teaching team.
And I learned, because I grew up watching Steve Irwin. And Steve Irwin picked up lots of snakes by the tails. So, that was how I understood. That's how you pick, you just pick it up. But apparently, you don't do that because it gives them enough reach to be able to bite you.
But I grew up in the lake. We just shot snakes. I didn't grow up at, like, Isaac, at Bethel Christian Camp, out in the wilderness on his own. Like, I didn't grow up like Chet, 30 miles from the middle of nowhere. Like, this is not an activity that we did. But, you're not supposed to pick them up by the tail.
This requires a little bit of faith here. And Moses takes a step of faith. He says, So, he put out his hand and he caught it and it became a staff in his hand. And the Lord says this, 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. He's like, Moses, do you see what I just did? I took a staff, I turned it into a snake.
I took the snake back into a staff. Do you see my power here? They will believe you. They will believe that the covenant God of their forefathers has called you. But, here's some more evidence of my power. He gives a second sign.
Verse 6, Again, the Lord said to him, Put your hand inside your cloak. So, Moses puts his hand inside his cloak. And he says, And put, he put his hand inside his cloak and when he took it out, behold, the hand was leprous like snow. Which, is terrifying. Right? It's terrifying.
Leprosy in their culture was awful. It was awful. It wasn't just the fact that you had a disease that you would slowly decay and die from for years. It was a great social stigma. You couldn't live amongst your own people. You'd announce that you were unclean.
People were scared of you. I mean, there's no cultural equivalent to what we have today. None. The closest thing you could probably make an argument for is maybe getting HIV in the 80s. But that doesn't even remotely come close to this.
Seeing your hand as leprous is terrifying. And he sees the power of God on display. Then God said, Put your hand back inside your cloak. So he put his hand back inside his cloak and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. God is showing the kind of power that he has. Moses, do you see this?
Do you see the power that I have? And then he offers one more sign. This is verse 8. If they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. And the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.
So they don't believe those two signs. Do this. Take some water from the Nile, pour it out, it will turn into blood. Which if you know the story of Exodus, that's going to end up being the first plague is turning the Nile into blood. So he says, listen, do this next.
Which is a little bit of future looking. You've seen these two signs. You're going to have to wait to see this one. Have a little faith here. But once you pour that out, I'm telling you, Moses, they're going to see that I am the God of your forefathers.
I am calling you. They will believe you. Moses says, well, what if they don't believe me? And God says, do you not see it as my power at work here? Moses, do you not see it's not about you? You have made yourself far too big.
And Moses has made God far too small. And yet, Moses doubts. Continue. Verse 10. But Moses said to the Lord, oh my Lord, I am not eloquent either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.
He says, I'm not eloquent. The Hebrew literally reads here, I am not a man of words. I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. And commentators look at this, the phrasing and how he answered this, and they say that it's very possible that Moses actually had some type of speech impediment. Some type of speech problem that he would use this type of language. So whether that is true or he's just not eloquent in speech, he's fearful.
He's looking at himself and he's like, oh, but I'm not a man of words. Which, this hits home for me. If you've, I've mentioned this in some sermons in the past, but since I was a kid, I've had a small, a minor speech impediment that I've had to work on for years.
[QA NOTE — 2026-05-10] The remainder of this sermon is missing from the cleaned transcript because Whisper produced a single unpunctuated mega-sentence at the tail of the audio. The raw text in transcription_work/ contains the rest. Recommend re-running the cleanup with timestamp-based punctuation restoration, or capturing the missing portion manually from the audio.