MONDAY 27 September “Preposterous Faith” (Exodus 3:21-4:9)

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Good Monday to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends as we begin another week together.

Have you ever wished you could clearly foresee the future? Or that God might tell you how things will be for you 5 or 10 years from now? Yesterday I left you with Moses on the hillside near a burning bush contemplating some remarkable things a voice from that bush has been telling him. I think you’ll find it really interesting to see what happens next in this remarkable and almost indescribable encounter Moses is having with God!

The Exodus record says in Exodus 3:21 that the burning bush voice spoke again: “And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, so that when you leave [Egypt] you will not go empty handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing…and so you will plunder the Egyptians.” By now I imagine Moses is feeling overloaded with information that frankly is too hard to believe. Why? Because God has been describing something that was beyond impossible. There is no way Pharaoh would simply let 1 million Hebrew slaves walk out of Egypt in freedom and allow them to take with them all their belongings and animals. Even if an invading army were to attack, Pharaoh would likely have conscripted the slaves into his army and forced them to fight to defend their homes and families. But now God was predicting that not only would Pharaoh allow the Hebrew slaves to leave as freed people, they would ‘plunder’ the Egyptians, and carry out with them the silver and gold of their slave masters! Could anything be more preposterous?

Now think back over your lifetime, my friends. Have you seen some things happen that are so unbelievable that even if an angel from heaven had told you BEFOREhand that these events would happen, you would have called that angel a liar? Yes my friends, history shows us the unthinkable, unimaginable, unreasonable can happen! As you look around your world right now, are there some things going on that even 10 years ago you could not have imagined?

It seems Moses was beginning to take this burning bush encounter seriously and starting to imagine what it might be like to actually participate with God in what God was commissioning him to do… Go back to Egypt, meet with the Hebrew leaders explaining what he had experienced on this hillside, and then lead them to Pharaoh for a confrontation that even Moses’ wildest imagination could not predict! But as Moses thought about it, fear and doubt were rising up in him. I can’t blame him for that, can you, my friends? Have you ever faced a situation where you felt God was leading you to take a huge step of faith, far outside your comfort zone, far beyond anything you’ve ever attempted before? What emotions did you feel, what did you do?

Now look around for a moment. Moses is all alone on this hillside, except for some sheep, so there’s no one to talk this over with, no one to ask ‘so what do you think I should do?’ So Moses gathers up the courage to ask the burning bush voice a very hard question: “What if they do not believe me or listen to me or say ‘The LORD did not appear to you?” (Ex. 4:1) I wonder what Moses was expecting to hear in response? I’m confident he was not expecting what happened next. The voice said to him “What is that in your hand?’ ‘A staff’ Moses replied. ‘Throw it on the ground.’ Moses threw his staff on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it!” Now if you and I were there as eye witness to all this, I’m sure we’d say this is getting stranger, perhaps weirder by the moment! The things the voice had said were increasingly preposterous and now this… a staff turns into a snake! What kind of snake? I don’t know but I do know most of the snakes that live in rugged hillside areas of the desert are rattlesnakes or similar highly venomous snakes. The kind of snakes you run from!

Moses had obviously encountered snakes before as he led his sheep, and that’s partly why he carried a staff as a weapon, but now my goodness, his staff actually became the snake. He’s empty handed, defenseless and can’t you see the snake curling up and shaking that rattle tail!? If I was Moses, I think this burning bush conversation is now over and I’m walking down the hillside toward my sheep and heading home shaking my head and hoping I haven’t lost my mind! But evidently not Moses. Something wells up inside him to stand back, watching the snake and trying to figure out what it all means. And then the voice again: “Reach out your hand and take the snake by the tail.” (Ex. 4:4) What?? Look at Moses’ face. How do you describe what you see? Why? What is the point here? Only a fool would grab a venomous snake by its tail! Yet the record says: “So Moses reached out his hand and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand.” Look at Moses’ eyes so wide open, his mouth hanging open, he’s having a hard time catching his breath, and then the burning bush voice speaks again: “This is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has appeared to you.” (Ex. 4:5)

I know what Moses is thinking, and so do you. ‘No one is ever going to believe this! If I tell people I encountered a burning bush that wasn’t being consumed as it burned, and a voice came to me out of this bush, and told me all the things I’ve heard here today, and then that voice told me to throw my staff on the ground and it became a snake. Everyone will tell me I’ve lost my mind, I’m a lunatic, I have suffered heat stroke of the brain! But then if I tell them the voice told me to pick up the snake by the tail, and I did, and it turned back into my staff… well, I can see people hiding their children behind their backs to keep them away from me, or possibly even reaching down to pick up stones to throw at me! NO! I can’t tell anyone about this entire episode, no one will ever believe a word I’ve said. It would be far better if I keep all this to myself and maybe I should simply pretend it all never happened.’

But God wasn’t finished yet… not by a long shot! The burning bush voice spoke again: “Put your hand inside your cloak’, So Moses did and when he took it out it was leprous like snow! ‘Now put it back into your cloak.'” Pause a second… would you put a highly contagious leprous hand back inside your cloak? Of course you are thinking whatever this disease is, it will spread all over my body! The last thing you want to do is put your leprous hand back inside your cloak next to your chest! But, what choice does Moses have? Maybe put his arm in the fire in hopes the flames will burn the leprosy away?

I’m guessing Moses sat down on a rock for a while. Looking at his staff, perhaps banging his staff against a rock. And then looking at his leprous hand and maybe trying to wipe off the scabs with a stick? And of course looking at the bush, still on fire, still not consumed. Finally I suppose Moses felt he really had no other good alternative. Perhaps as the staff reversed itself from a snake back into a staff, perhaps if he did put his hand inside his garment, it would reverse the illness back to normal again? The record says: “So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. Then the LORD said, ‘If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. 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…it will become blood.” (Ex. 4:8,9)

I think Moses sat down on that rock again exhausted emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. He’d never experienced anything like this. The Egyptian palace had given him the best education, but no scientist, not even a magician could explain all this. His years with Jethro, the ‘priest of Midian’ had no explanation for this burning bush encounter. Who is this God and what should Moses do in response to all this information and this unexplainable experience? Let’s pause right here for today and join Moses in his questions. How do you explain WHO God is, WHAT God’s attributes and characteristics are? How do you explain God’s power, God’s miracles? How do you explain a conversation with God?

May I urge us all to press in… talk with God about this first hand report that Moses has written about his experience that day. Will you simply cast it off as a fairy tale or will you engage with God asking that He help you understand God? Read through what Moses has written here and ask God to explain it to you!

Here’s a song to help us as we cry out to God for the FAITH needed to believe HIM when He calls us to step out in such outrageous ways. . .

Today’s Scripture is Exodus 3:21-4:9.

Choose below to read or listen.

Exodus 3:21-22

Exodus 4:1-9

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

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