Passage: Exodus 4:1-9
The Big Idea
Moses worries the people won’t believe him, so God gives him three signs. The staff that becomes a serpent teaches Moses to depend on God’s grace, and pictures Jesus, who became a curse for us and was lifted up. The hand made leprous and restored reminds Moses that he’s a sinner who can only serve by grace, and pictures Jesus, the sinless One made sin for us. The water turned to blood warns that whatever we trust instead of God will become a curse. Pride and doubt keep us from grace; humility and faith receive it.
What’s Your Greatest Weakness?
Job interviews love that question.
Interviewer: “What would you say is your greatest weakness?”
Me: “Telling what’s real from what’s not.”
Interviewer: “And your greatest strength?”
Me: “I’m Batman.”
Nobody likes admitting weakness. But in God’s kingdom, admitting weakness is where strength begins.
“Suppose They Won’t Believe Me” (Exodus 4:1)
Moses said, “What if they don’t believe me or listen to me, and say, ‘The LORD didn’t appear to you’?”
Sign One: The Staff and the Serpent (Exodus 4:2-5)
The Lord asked, “What’s that in your hand?” “A staff.” “Throw it on the ground.” Moses threw it down, it became a snake, and Moses ran from it. Then the Lord said, “Reach out and grab it by the tail.” Moses reached out and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand again. “This is so they’ll believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to you.”
The lesson for Moses
- The staff was what Moses leaned on, what he depended on, his strength and his defense in danger. Why? Because he was weak.
- That’s not a bad thing. It’s a picture of the grace of God. “Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). The staff speaks of God’s upholding, strengthening, protecting grace: His everlasting promise to provide everything you need through Jesus Christ.
- In Him all the fullness of God dwells bodily, and you are complete in Him (Colossians 2:9-10).
- The lesson: as long as Moses keeps depending on God’s grace, all is well. But the moment he throws that dependence down, he’s helpless before the enemy.
How can I defeat Satan? How can I be smarter or stronger than he is? Only by simple dependence on God.
The lesson for the people
Moses could perform a supernatural sign. That would show the people he really was chosen by God, not just a man selling them something. Nothing in his ministry would come by human skill.
A shadow of the gospel
- Jesus is the Rod. The Lord will send the rod of His strength out of Zion (Psalm 110:2).
- The rod was cast down: rejected, thrown away.
- Did Jesus become the devil? Of course not. But the serpent always takes us back to the curse, and Jesus became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). He was bruised and killed, bearing God’s curse on our sin in Himself.
- How are we saved? When He is lifted up. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life (John 3:14-15).
- Just like that later event, the serpent’s poison was made harmless by faith.
Faith reaches out
Moses had to reach out a hand of faith, with no guarantee except God’s word. (By the way, how do you measure a snake? In inches, because they don’t have feet.)
Faith shows itself in action. Someone says, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I’ll show you my faith by my works (James 2:18). Moses took hold of the snake: a work, but done only by faith.
There are two ways to do good works:
- By faith: God must come through for me, and I believe He will.
- By the flesh: I can do this. It depends on my ability and strength.
James never means works done in the flesh. He’s teaching us how to live by faith, not just think by faith.
“Do you believe the gospel?”
- One answer: “I think so. I understand it. But I still make my own decisions, choose my own path, and ignore the commands that so clearly show God’s heart.”
- Another answer: “I’ve laid it all on the line. If God doesn’t come through, I’m sunk. I’ve given Him my money, my time, everything. I say no to some pleasures. I go against the flow. People don’t always like me. I heard the word of the Lord, ‘Take hold of the snake,’ and I’ve grabbed it by the tail. If I’m wrong, I’m dead. But I believe His word.”
Test yourself to see if you’re in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). You’ll see failures. But do you also see faith, however small? Places where you set aside your own wisdom and chose to trust God’s word and His promises?
Sign Two: The Leprous Hand (Exodus 4:6-8)
The Lord said, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” Moses did, and when he took it out, it was leprous, white as snow. “Put it back inside your cloak.” He did, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his skin. “If they don’t believe the first sign, they may believe the second.”
In Scripture, leprosy is a powerful picture of sin. It’s contagious and ugly. It starts small, spreads and kills. Man can’t cure it. And it cast people out of the camp and away from the congregation.
The lesson for Moses
- “Moses, you’re a sinner. Don’t forget it. Your heart is infected; so is your hand.”
- Only God’s grace makes him whole enough to serve.
- The hand speaks of work and energy. Moses was about to become the hand of God to save His people. But no one can be God’s instrument of deliverance in the flesh. The flesh is corrupt.
- Don’t try to serve God by natural ability, your own efforts, ideas and plans. Everything we do to serve the Lord must be by grace alone. God’s power must cleanse and fill us before we step out.
How?
- Humility: “I’m truly a sinner, but God gives grace upon grace to wash me and enable me to serve.”
- Faith: “I reach out in obedience to His Word. Go! Serve! Love!”
And our sin problem is everywhere: hidden in the heart (the cloak) and exposed in our actions (the hand). But Jesus deals with all of it. His grace alone gives us right standing before God. We could never earn that.
A shadow of the gospel
Moses’ hand was clean, then leprous, then clean again.
- Jesus was sinless. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22).
- Yet the sinless One was made sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
- He became the leper for us. Lepers lived outside the camp, and Jesus suffered outside the city gate (Hebrews 13:12). He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and by His wounds we are healed (1 Peter 2:24).
- And then He was “clean” again. When His suffering was finished, He committed His spirit into the Father’s hands (Luke 23:46). The sin was really gone. God raised Him and exalted Him.
Sign Three: Water to Blood (Exodus 4:9)
“If they don’t believe even these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on dry ground. The water will become blood on the ground.”
- The Nile was Egypt’s source of life, and the Egyptians worshiped it.
- God is saying, “What you trust in now will become a curse, because it isn’t your true source of life.”
- Our world loves technology, security, education, tradition, strength, power and influence. God will judge these too. Not because they’re evil in themselves, but because people trust them instead of Him.
If the first two signs are rejected, the third is the consequence: judgment. If people refuse God’s truth and grace, the only alternative is His judgment.
Why would anyone choose wrath over love and grace? Pride and doubt. “I don’t need God. I don’t believe God. His Word means nothing to me.”
That’s Eden, replayed over and over in our lives. The tempter keeps whispering that we should doubt God and do things our own way.
When in Doubt, Go to the Word
As a young man, G. Campbell Morgan was already preaching when doubts about the Bible overwhelmed him. Reading the skeptics of his day left him confused. So he canceled his preaching engagements, locked his books away, bought a new Bible, and decided to read it with an open mind, trusting that if it really was God’s Word, it would prove itself to his soul. It did. He later said the Bible found him. He spent the rest of his life preaching and teaching it.
The devil can’t win in the light of God’s Word. Darkness can’t linger when you flip on the light switch. The Word is always effective, faithful and powerful, God’s grace put on paper, His power laid out for us to grab hold of.
Why does God give it to us in a book? Because receiving it takes humility and faith. You won’t read the Word unless you believe you need the God of the Word. He gives grace to the humble, and we access grace by faith. Pride and doubt keep us away.
Humility and Faith
Andrew Murray wrote about this in Humility. He described hearing someone compare the blessings of the deeper Christian life to items in a shop window: clearly visible, yet unreachable behind a thick pane of glass. Christians can see God’s promises of peace, rest, love, joy and fruitfulness, yet something keeps them from possessing them. Murray said that something is pride.
He pointed to Jesus’ question, “How can you believe, when you receive honor from one another and don’t seek the honor that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44). And he wrote:
We can never have more of true faith than we have of true humility.
Humility is simply the disposition which prepares the soul for living on trust.
Murray noted that the two people Jesus praised for great faith were also remarkably humble: the centurion who said, “I’m not worthy for You to come under my roof” (Matthew 8:8-10), and the mother who said even the dogs eat the crumbs from their master’s table (Matthew 15:27-28). Humility that makes us nothing before God removes every hindrance to faith.
Grace Takeaway
God answered Moses’ fear with three signs that all point to Jesus: the Rod who became a curse and was lifted up, and the sinless One who was made sin for us and is now clean and exalted. Don’t throw down your dependence on His grace. Don’t trust the Nile. Admit your weakness and your sin, open His Word, and reach out in faith. Grace is given to the humble, and it’s received by faith.
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