073 - But I Don't Wanna!

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. So sometimes when I'm facing a really big task, I make excuses. Oh, we all do. Why?

Why? Well, because we don't admit that we just don't. We just don't want to do it.

Yeah. Well, can you imagine having a conversation with God where God proposes using you in a certain way and you use excuses because you just don't want to tell him. You just don't want to. I don't want to.

Well, it's going to happen between Moses and God today. On More Than Ink. Well, good morning. Welcome to our dining room table. It is the Christmas season. It's the week before Christmas. Christmas season. And if you were actually in our home this morning, you would see lights everywhere.

Everywhere. Because I love Christmas lights, and so I'm sitting at our dining room table across from my amazing husband, Jim, and we are about to – And who are you? Well, I'm Dorothy. Okay, just get that in there. We're about to jump back into our conversation with Moses, the conversation at the burning bush, which is a vision, a picture that everybody is familiar with.

Yeah. I know it's been a week, but he's still in the front of that burning bush as we come back to him this morning. He's holding what I euphemistically call his discussion with God. Well, and if you remember, we got to the point in the conversation where God had introduced himself, right? And Moses had asked him, well, who am I? And God says, it doesn't matter who you are, it's who I am.

Irrelevant. And then the second question Moses asked was, well, who are you? What is your name, and who shall I tell the people sent me? And then God gives him this amazing name.

I am who I am. Right. I'm the God of your fathers.

I'm the God who promised, and I've come down to deliver you. Yeah. So...

So I'm the God fulfilling my promises. Exactly. Yeah, and you're going to be part of that program, and that's part of what the discussion is all about, as Moses wrestles with the idea about how am I supposed to be part of this program. Right.

I mean, really. God had told him exactly what the program was going to be. You're going to go to Pharaoh.

You're going to make a request. He's going to say no, and things are going to go from bad to worse, but you're coming out of there, and you're going to come out rich. Right, right. So God is, you know, God very seldom tells us that much about the future.

No. That's a lot of detail for Moses to absorb. Almost none. And you can kind of see why when you see this whole thing go down, because Moses is kind of freaked out by what's going to go on here. I mean, this is a big deal, so it raises a thousand objections in his mind. I think that's why God doesn't tell me what's going to happen in the next years, because I've got a lot of objections I need to raise. Say, wait a second, I've got a question about that. Right, got a question. Yeah, so this is Moses doing that very thing. Well, what's beautiful about these questions is that God answers every single one. He does.

He does. Even the last one, which we'll get to in a minute. Yeah. No, it's God's very patient with Moses here. So we pick up the story. In chapter four. In the top of chapter four, verse one.

And again, remember, we're still in front of the burning bush. And Moses is standing barefoot in this holy place before the Lord. Standing barefoot in a holy place, and he's wrestling with his role in this plan that God has very clearly outlined for him in the previous chapter. I mean, Moses knows what's going to go down. But still, there's problems in his mind.

He's working through how this is going to happen, right? And God has already told him, now I am who I am, and they will listen to your voice when you tell this that. They will listen.

Yeah, that comes out of verse 18 in the last chapter. They will listen. So when we jump into this, his next question is like, well, hmm, God's already told you they're going to listen, so why are you asking this? But Moses has problems with how that'll work. Okay, so we need to jump into the text. I'll read this time. Okay, so we're in the top of chapter 4, verse 1. So Moses answered, but behold, they will not believe me.

Why? Okay, that's honest. They will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they'll say, well, the Lord didn't appear to you. That's actually a good objection. I suppose. Yeah, okay, because they're going to say, who are you, basically, and how do I know that God really talked to you?

So verse 2. Well, they have a long enough memory. They're going to remember who Moses was and why he blew out of there in the first place.

That's true. They might think this was the presumptuous guy who thought he was the sheriff of the Israelites in Egypt. God didn't appear to you.

This is a story you're making up just to get back into Egypt. So this is a good objection. So the Lord said to him, well, okay, what's in your hand? And 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. But the Lord said to Moses, put your hand, put out your hand and catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand, caught it, and it became a staff in his hand that they may believe that the Lord, the God of the fathers, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has appeared to you. We'll just stop right there.

Okay. So he does the staff and the snake thing. So God gives him a sign to demonstrate. Gives Moses a sign. Gives Moses a sign to demonstrate to the people that God himself has met with him, and it's an interesting sign. It's an interesting sign. What do you make of it?

Yeah, a lot of things. But I was just thinking when I read this just recently how that staff becomes a central character. In the whole book. In the whole book.

I mean, this is not the only place. And this actual event that God says will happen that he does here first for Moses, it dawned on me how much this was as much a sign that he'll be able to use later on to authenticate that God actually talked to him. But for Moses himself, this is a sign where this burning bush God is saying, I'll do this, and let's just do it right now, okay? And so in a real sense, it was a sign to sort of embolden Moses in this discussion as well. Well, and the serpent was a symbol of Egypt.

Absolutely. So God says, you know, you got this staff, throw that down, and it becomes this slithering serpent on the ground, and he says, now pick it, catch it by the tail. By the tail. Well, if you're going to pick up a snake, you don't grab it by the tail.

It's a bed of rice. You grab it right behind the head. Yeah, the muscles in a snake are built so that if something nips at its tail, it can actually whip around fast and get it. I mean, that's a bad place to grab a snake. But here God says, now you grab it by the tail. Is the picture not God's going to grab Egypt by its tail? Yeah, yeah. And shake it. Yeah, this powerful source like an asp, like these snakes, it's no big deal for God.

And I'm going to put you in a position where it won't hurt you either. Yeah, there's great symbology. In fact, when I looked at this some years ago, it turns out there is a kind of snake that sort of hides in the sand. It shields itself from the sun by being in the sand. So it wiggles, and it'll actually make about a quarter inch to half an inch of sand over its body to shield it from the sun. Oh, that's interesting. And just its nostrils and that little tongue that flips out and out, that's coming out of the sand.

So you can actually be walking in the desert and not know you're walking on top of a snake until it pops out and strikes you. Yikes. That's terrifying, isn't it?

Thanks for that. So it's this terrifying threat, which actually Egypt seems to be to the rest of the world, and God's telling Moses, but you can handle them by the tail, and he's not going to hurt you. You're going to grab it by the tail. Yeah, it's a really great symbolism. So that's the first sign. First sign. God gives Moses. That they may believe, this is verse 5, 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. Right, right. So then in verse 6, it says again, the Lord said to him, and here comes the second sign. And wouldn't you think the snake thing would be enough?

Would be enough? Yeah, apparently there's another one. Okay, there's more. Put your hand inside your cloak. And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. 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. 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. This is number three now. Oh, this is number three. Shall I stop? No, let's finish it.

No, keep going, keep going. 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. Yeah. Now, these both have some symbology to them as well.

They do. But they are striking miracles. So God's saying, I'm putting three bullets in your miracle gun, and here they are.

And your sign gun. Now, the purpose of a sign is to indicate God is doing something. This is to authenticate that Moses is God's guy. In fact, when you see that in the New Testament as well, miracles are always signs to authenticate in that sense. So what do you make about, do you see these symbology in the hand going leprous and then coming out and then being healed again?

Because for the first time I looked at that and I said, ah, that's saying something about Moses himself to me. Perhaps. I don't know. I haven't really thought about this one deeply.

Well, I haven't either until just now. But you know, if you are, you know, leprosy in biblical times was so contagious, they would separate lepers. Now, I don't know about the attitude toward leprosy in Egypt, but everyone recognized that leprosy, this kind of leprosy was not healable. Right. Right. So if you brought your hand out and it was leprous, then you're not going to put it back inside against your skin and expect it to come out clean.

Not in a million years. So regardless of the implications of it being leprous, that move from unhealable to clean and healed would get attention. Yeah. And in the ancient world, even up to the time of Jesus, when you talk about healing diseases and stuff like that, healing the blind, come on, the lame, that's like way off the charts.

That's way off the charts. And they clearly said no one can do that but God Himself. So when you get down to these personal things like that, and leprosy was the same category.

I mean it's clearly several notches above, just the ability to duplicate the stick and the snake thing. It's hard to duplicate this in some kind of way and make it, I mean this is real healing. But I was just thinking, and this is just a brand new thought to me, that this is different because this is like God says, I'm going to give you a personal injury, and then I'm going to make that personal injury go away. I'm going to take it away.

I wondered if He was trying to say to Moses as well through this, that your shortcomings, your personal injuries, what you think you're coming short in terms of your qualifications to do this, may seem to be severe and disable you. But they don't disable you. I can eradicate those as easily as anything else. Oh well that's interesting because that then connects to the next question. It sort of does. So that's an interesting insight to me.

I'm going to have to think about that. And by the way, for our listeners, we both firmly believe that God does nothing capriciously. He does everything with great forethought, and there's a lot of teaching embedded in all He does. I think even in the design of the universe, there's teaching involved that points us back to God because the heavens are telling the glory of God. So when He comes up with these three signs that Moses can use, these are not arbitrary. These are saying things that are two, three, four levels deeper than even you or I totally understand. And they may have communicated something to Moses and to the Egyptians that escapes us completely. And that's what we're sitting here speculating about.

But the fact that we're given so much detail about these things is important. And did you notice the repetition in verses 7 and 8? He put it in, take it out, put it in, take it out, put it in, take it out. So that's driving home the change in condition of this hand that's leprous and then clean. And it reminds me of that guy that Jesus healed. Remember that? The guy with the withered hand? Well, there were many. Oh, okay. Well, that wasn't leprosy, though.

That was just undeveloped or disabled. But the same kind of your hand is useless from this. But it's the same category of this is something that you can't fake. Nobody can fix this. Only God himself can do this. In that particular case, I didn't look up where that is.

You can go check it out. But Jesus does it and he declares he's going to do it almost on a dare to the Pharisees because it's on the Sabbath. And he says, I'm going to do this. Do you think it's right that I should do this?

Can I do this? And he gets this resistance, this hard heart from the Pharisees in the spot. And then he does it and they don't know what to say. Well, and they're angry. They are angry. Because he does it in their face on the Sabbath.

Almost, I won't say on a dare. That's the wrong word to use. But he tells them, this is what I'm going to do. You got a problem with that?

And then he does it. And they have a problem with that. Okay, so we need to come back to Moses. We'll come back to Moses.

Because our time is flying. You want to talk about the blood and water thing? Well, you know, it's interesting because the Nile was literally the lifeblood of the nation of Egypt.

Totally, totally. That's why Egypt grew where it did and became so powerful because they had this incredibly faithful water source. So, you know, God gives him this sign which we're actually going to see becomes one of the plagues later. Take some water from the Nile, pour it on the ground. And the water you take will become blood on the ground.

On the ground. I'm going to pour out the lifeblood of Egypt. Yeah, very symbolic.

Not just a cheap magic trick. This has real symbolism to it. Yeah, and if the Egyptians were superstitious at all, they would have seen these things as a threat. Yeah, oh, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And the Nile is a very sacred source of life for Egypt. I mean, nearly the entire continent of Egypt drained through the Nile. The country, the land of Egypt, not the continent.

Did I say? Oh, I meant the continent of Africa, actually. Well, the continent of Africa, yeah. So much of Africa empties into the Nile.

And the beneficiaries are everyone that lives along the Nile and most especially Egypt at the top of Africa. I mean, it's a big deal. So the Nile was seen as a very sacred thing.

And so when you turn it into blood like this and making it useless and defiled, it's like, wow. Yeah, so there's just tons of symbolism. Again, we'd have to speculate to put ourselves in the cultural shoes that people would see this, but it means a lot more to them than we understand.

But the issue here is in order to validate that I have spoken to you and sent you so that they may believe, I'm giving you these signs to demonstrate. Yeah, exactly. That is true. So that makes this next question totally fascinating. Well, and yeah, just to recap a little bit, God already told them back in chapter 2 that they will listen to you. Right. I mean, they will listen to you. And so that's going to happen. And then God, and then Moses says, but they won't believe that I came from God.

Okay, here's three ways you can authenticate that we actually had this discussion and I'm sending you. So we should be done here, right? Right. But no.

But no. So verse 10, Moses said to the Lord, oh, my Lord. Now, he uses a different word for Lord here.

That's right. He doesn't call him by his personal name. Oh, my Lord, I'm not eloquent, either in the past or since you've spoken to your servant, but I'm slow of speech and of tongue.

So what's this question about? This is an excuse. This is an excuse. But I'm not adequate.

I never have been and not since you've been talking to me. Right. You haven't healed me yet.

Right. It's just the slightest hint here that he's sort of blaming God for his inadequacy. Well, and you see the emergence of not an incapable heart, but an unwilling heart. Unwilling heart. You see unwillingness start to poke up right here. Unwilling to believe that God can do it. It's like when someone really doesn't want to do something, but they won't tell you that.

They'll tell you two or three other things. Right. To kind of misdirect you. It just should have said the one.

No, I just don't want to. That's what you should have said. Well, that's where we're going.

That's where we're going. But up to this point, God has met his every question. He's been very responsive.

With a I will, I am, I'll give you answer. So the focus is not on Moses. It's on God. Right.

And now Moses is bringing it back to himself. He's like, well, I'm slow of speech. Maybe he had a speech impediment. Maybe he wasn't a quick thinker. Maybe.

These seem to be physical issues for him. And look at the Lord's answer in verse 11. 11. I love this. Do you want to read that?

Yeah. So the Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now, therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. I love that. And Moses is saying to him, you know, I'm not sure if you know this, God, but I'm not a great speaker.

Right. I'm clumsy. I'm not eloquent. Dude, who made you? I'm tongue tied.

Who made your mouth? Do you think this is news to me? And God says to him, I will be with you. Yeah. And that changes everything.

Absolutely. That changes everything. Because he's coming from the perspective that if I'm on my own on this mission and I go there, I know that I'm incapable of doing this. I don't have the tongue. Right. I can't do this.

And that's probably an accurate assessment. God says, you know what, that's completely overruled when I'm with you, because you're not alone. I'm with you through all this.

Remember? You know, I have come down to deliver them, and I want you to go. So I'm with you through this entire thing. But you know, Moses' unwillingness is just poking up here, and he's sort of making excuses.

They're probably mired in truth. He probably did have a speaking problem, but that's irrelevant. And now it's completely obvious what the real issue is. Yeah. And he says, oh my Lord, and again, not the I am, but Adonai, my master, my Lord. Oh my Lord, please send someone else. I just don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. Now the will is completely exposed, because God has met his every question and every objection with I am.

I am and I will. So now we're down to unbelief. I just don't want to. I just don't want to, because I really, underneath that, I don't believe you really will.

Yes. So at this point, God's response is anger, which I understand, because what he's saying when he's saying all this kind of stuff is God's outlined the entire thing, and in his refusal to say send somebody else, he's saying, God, I don't think you can do what you just told me we're going to do. And I don't think you can do this, which, by the way, was the error they made when they got to the brink of the promised land.

That's right. God's promise, bias came out, too many giants, and the people said, God can't do this. God can't complete his promise to us. So here Moses himself is going through this life lesson of saying to God, everything you just told me might be true, but I don't think you can do it.

See, you know, we think of Moses as a completed person, but something I came to understand last time I studied through Exodus was Exodus recounts the growth of Moses as a man of God. Oh, for real. And here we see his condition at the beginning of the assignment.

God didn't wait till he was perfect before he gave him the assignment. No. He said, I'm with you. I want you to go. You're the guy.

You're the drawer outer. Right. Right. And yet here his will and his unbelief is fully exposed. And so it points at kind of a hidden purpose about why God involves us in what he's doing. It's because of the life change we go through as we walk with God through it. And you see this with David, too, when he's persecuted and when he writes the Psalms. God's taking him through tough times, but as he walks with God, he changes. Well, here, as Moses walks with God, he'll change. That's why God wants you along for the journey. God does not need you. He can do this on his own. He doesn't need the headaches of Moses and the headaches of Aaron, which is coming up in a second. But he says, but for your benefit, I'm sending you. Wow.

Really? Well, and it's interesting to me that verse 14 says, then after this will and this unbelief is fully exposed. That's when the anger of the Lord is kindled. God had answered his every question up to that point.

And then God says, okay, now the issue is really exposed. You just don't believe me. You don't believe.

But here's the amazing thing. God in his grace says, I'm going to do this anyway. You don't want to? Well, you're going to.

Still moving forward. But I'm going to give you some help. So then he says this halfway through verse 14, and he said to Moses, is there not Aaron your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well.

He can speak well. Behold. And now Aaron was the older brother. Behold, he's coming out to meet you. And when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.

Okay, wait a minute. That kind of implies that Aaron knew where Moses was. That there may have been some communication over the years, a message or a letter. Or that Moses wondered if Aaron himself kind of hated the fact of what he did and then left and abandoned his... We don't know.

We don't know. But it does tend to say that there was some friction, but he'll be glad when he sees you. But Aaron's coming. God says, Aaron's coming and he'll be glad when he sees you. He's a willing participant in the next thing I'm proposing is what God's saying. And now this is a fascinating thing to me in verse 15. God says to Moses, you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people and he shall be your mouth and you shall be as God to him and take in your hand this staff with which you shall do the signs.

Yeah, don't forget the staff. But it's interesting because what he says is Aaron will be your mouthpiece. He won't be my mouthpiece. He'll be your mouthpiece. It's like Aaron might have a good tongue, but he's short on content. I'm giving you the content and I'm giving both of you content actually. But he's not going to be my spokesman. You're my spokesman, but we'll use Aaron.

So if the whole lips thing is a problem, look, I just solved it. He speaks pretty well. Doesn't he?

Objections refused. Well, we know later in the event of the golden calf, some not so far in the future, that was something Aaron was involved in. And it makes you wonder at that time when things go south, I mean, there's another time when, I mean, Aaron, he actually leads a mutiny against Moses for a short time. So Aaron ends up being kind of a problem child as he helps Moses. And Miriam was involved in that, too.

Yeah, exactly. And I've always wondered whether, while that's unfolding in front of Moses' eyes, where he'd smack himself on the forehead and say, I shouldn't have done this. This is my fault because I told God I can't speak and now I've got Aaron. But God in His grace says this plan is going forward.

If you want to not do or not going to believe me, I'll bring along a helper, I'll bring along. It's still going to happen. But you might not be real glad. Yeah. In the end, you'll regret that you said this right here. I mean, you probably will. Yeah, just believe me.

Believe what I'm saying and let's go forward with the plan. But there's growth that needs to happen in Moses and he needs to understand that you can take out at his word and that you can believe his plans are going to unfold exactly the way he says they're going to. And there's growth in Aaron. And there is growth in Aaron. Yeah. Yeah, they both change. It's a fascinating story.

I'm glad we have the whole book of Exodus ahead of us because we'll see these two men change over the course of this adventure together. Yeah. Yeah. So we've only got a couple minutes left, but I was just thinking to encourage those of you who are listening, use your observation skills now. Go back through chapters three and four and isolate those questions and look at the sequence of them. Who am I?

Yeah. Who am I to? What if they don't believe me? And then, but I'm not adequate and then I just don't want to. I don't want to.

What's being exposed? I really have taken those questions to heart over the last few years. And in general, when God decides to use you in his plans of what he's going to do, the simple thing you need to do is just agree to be available.

And qualifications play a very secondary role. I mean, God knows when he's calling you to be part of it. He knows what you're like. He knows what you're capable of. He knows what's going on. He's picked exactly the right person for the right job.

And he meets every fear and every doubt with himself. Yes. I will be with you. I will. Yeah, I will. I will. And that's actually the word throughout when you get in the New Testament and the Holy Spirit comes.

God's with you. Very evident. I'm not leaving you alone.

Very evident. And I will speak your mouth. I will give you the words in your mouth. Or the famous words, Joshua, I won't leave you or forsake you. So I mean, this is God's presence with mankind is what Moses is dealing with right here.

And that presence with Moses changes everything, changes absolutely everything. And is Moses willing to step out and do that? Or is he going to stand behind his little pouty face and say, I don't want to? Well, he's going to anyway.

Well, it was pretty clear here that the thing that angers God is Moses' refusal to act when God has met his every inadequacy with God himself, his own inadequacy. He's been so patient through all this. And so, boy, we can take that to heart too. Yeah, yeah.

Well, listen, we've come to the end of this. And next time, we're going to take a slight break because our next program is going to be right on Christmas Day. Christmas is coming.

It ought to be on Christmas Day. So we're going to do something a little different to change it up before we come back to see Moses leave Midian. We're going to take Christmas Day and look at one of our favorite Christmas hymns, the songs, carols, I don't know what you call them.

And look at the biblical content in it because I think, in my opinion, this one's got the fattest biblical content of any Christmas carol in the world. So we're just going to sit down and ruminate on that. And then the next week, we'll go back to Moses and see if we can get him out of Midian and get him back to Egypt.

And that does happen, just to let you know, plot spoiler, that will happen. So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're with us.

It's a great adventure. And before we get to next week, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Bye. Bye. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org.