Lessons from the Burning Bush
Exodus 4:1-14
4 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”
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.”
6 Then the Lord said, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, the skin was leprous[a]—it had become as white as snow.
7 “Now put it back into your cloak,” he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.
8 Then the Lord said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. 9 But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.”
10 Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
13 But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”
14 Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you.
As of December, I committed to reading the "Sparkling Gems" devotional by Rick Renner (get yours here:https://renner.org/product-category/renner-books/) AND read the Bible in one year. I have not missed a day and feel that it provides my day with the right footing.
As I was reading this morning, Exodus 4, 5, and 6 as well as Matthew 16, I noticed something different in the book of Exodus. I want to cover what I feel like I learned so that you can maybe glean something too.
God uses things we hold sacred to teach us a lesson
One repeating theme we see throughout the Bible is God using things we as humans find sacred or special to teach us a lesson. To the American culture, in the 21st Century, some of this can be hard to relate to, so as we go along, picture something we in America hold dearly, like Professional Sports, the Internet, Social Media, or Movies/Movie Stars. Now picture God turning things upside down in those realms to teach all America something at the same time. While I do believe we are about to see something akin to this in the next few years, based largely on the Prophetic words of Pastor Hank Kunneman, Prophet Kim Clement, and others, I think the point here is that God is in control.
The verse that caught my eye in this verses 2-5 of Exodus 4, (see above) where God tells Moses to use a staff, something ordinary, mundane and transforms it into a snake. Moses would understand this, but we need help. According to Scholarworks.nvm.edu,
The Egyptians recognized the serpent as a deadly creature, but they also saw them as concomitant symbols of protection, healing, fertility, and immortality, as evidenced in various ancient texts and artifacts such as healing cippi, protective amulets, and the uraeus snake on the forefront of the pharaoh's crown.
God used something that the Pharoah and his advisors and priests would viewed as a sign of protection and said "I made this, I control it, I am God, not you." God displaying a snake and having Moses pick it up by the tail and restoring it to a staff would have indicated to the Pharoah that he's not a god. The Egyptian culture believed that the role of the Pharoah was that of a living god, directly and divinely providing for the people of Egypt. God came on the scene with Moses, later, and put Pharoah in his place. Later, God enshrines this concept in the very first of the Ten Commandments
"2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me." Exodus 20:2-3
But it goes deeper than that too, God came and challenged the entirety of the pantheon of Egyptian gods. There is a fantastic explanation of this on rice.edu, https://www.stat.rice.edu/~dobelman/Dinotech/10_Eqyptian_gods_10_Plagues.pdf
In it the author shows that each one of the plagues, starting with the water of the Nile turning to blood and culminating in the death of each of the first born sons related directly to one of the gods that the Egyptians worshipped.
Especially here in the USA, we make idols out of everything, these gods, whether directly related to the spiritual or not become the same type of things to us as the snake was to the Egyptians. How many of us put acquiring wealth, or watching content, or getting famous above obeying and following the creator of our soul?
God uses things we think cannot change to show that it can
The next portion of Exodus 4 that caught my eye was the next spot in verses 6 and 7. Why did God show Moses leprousy specifically? Sure, He validated to Moses that He has the power to heal, but I believe it was something deeper than that. Through out the Bible, we find amazing stories of underdogs triumphing. David vs. Goliath, Jesus defeating death, all of these things we see show us and prove to us that God can use the things we think are never going to change and flip that on its ear! They had a lot of medical knowledge, but one thing that was a death sentence in the ancient world, and a pretty nasty one that that, and show His ALMIGHTY ability to turn things around. Showing us that not one of us is ever truly lost.
I love this poem from the Lord of the Rings,
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost” (J.R.R. Tolkien)
This emphasizes my point all the more:
Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. 1 Corinthians 3:18-19
God showed this so many times in the life of Jesus leading to the ultimate example of this by dying and being Resurrected to life again.
Colossians 2:13-17 tells us,
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
It's important to remember that we all mess up and make mistakes, Romans 3:23 tells us that we all sin (miss the mark, don't quite hit the target), but God will forgive us and cleanse us if we confess our sins (Romans 10:9-10) and believe that Jesus is Lord.
God uses resources in ways we do not expect
Finally, I want to note that Moses was asked to use his voice on behalf of the people. Verses 10-14 show a somewhat relatable conversation I am sure any believer has had at some point. "You want me to do what?" Moses says "But God, I am not right for this." God disagreed.
11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
More so than anything else, when God tells us to do something we should do it. Samuel reminds us in 1 Samuel 15:22-31 that God prefers that we obey more than he wants sacrifices. When we obey God, the resources we have can multiply, as we see in the Feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000 men in Matthew chapter 14 and 15, or He can stretch the resources, as we read later in Exodus where God provides food and makes the clothing on the Hebrews not wear out while they wander, or He can do truly creative things. God says "Behold I am doing a new thing..." (Isaiah 43:19), God can take what we see as mundane, like Moses' rod, and the Nile river and turn them in to tools of our deliverance from Sin, challenges, and struggle. The thing to remember is that we must go when and where He tells us and obey what He asks us to do.