^“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” Romans 12:1-2, MSG

Moses, the one who took another man’s life and ran from the scene of the crime, is living comfortably and peacefully, pursuing the quiet life as a shepherd.  Moses fit into the shepherd culture easily and didn’t seem to miss the palace life.  But God, who uses every circumstance and situation to accomplish his will, is stirring Moses’ heart by igniting a fire within him.  The bush is not the only thing burning as God speaks.

I surrender all
I surrender all
All to Thee my blessed Savior
I surrender all… I can hear this sweet hymn of surrender echoing in the background as we read this very precious, powerful, and personal encounter between God and Moses.  Observe how Moses surrenders to God in part and then the whole.  And now, episode two, season one.

Exodus 4

Signs for Moses

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—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. ¹⁵ You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. ¹⁶ He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. ¹⁷ But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.”

Moses Returns to Egypt

¹⁸ Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.”

Jethro said, “Go, and I wish you well.”

¹⁹ Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead.” ²⁰ So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.

²¹ The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. ²² Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, ²³ and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’”

²⁴ At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. ²⁵ But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it.^[c] “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. ²⁶ So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)

²⁷ The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. ²⁸ Then Moses told Aaron everything the Lord had sent him to say, and also about all the signs he had commanded him to perform.

²⁹ Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, ³⁰ and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, ³¹ and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Was Moses “all in”?  We can learn much from Moses’ first responses to God.

Moses completely missed the message of God’s name and miraculous power. “I Am” is all that we need in every circumstance of life, and it’s foolish for us to argue, “I am not.” If God can turn a staff into a snake and a snake into a staff, if He can cause and cure leprosy, and if He can turn water into blood, then surely God can enable Moses to speak His Word with power. Moses was looking at himself instead of looking to God.

The God who made us is able to use the gifts and abilities He has given us to accomplish the tasks He assigns to us.

Was Moses manifesting an attitude of pride or true humility? Forty years earlier, he felt perfectly adequate to face the enemy and act on behalf of his people; but now he’s backing off and professing himself to be a worthless failure.

But humility isn’t thinking poorly of ourselves; it’s simply not thinking of ourselves at all but making God everything. The humble servant thinks only of God’s will and God’s glory, not his or her own inadequacy, success, or failure. Moses was clothing his pride and unbelief in a hollow confession of weakness.

“Lord, please, send anybody else!” was Moses’ final plea. Moses calls Him “Lord” and yet was refusing to obey His orders. (See also Luke 6:46; Acts 10:14). Most of us understand that attitude because we’ve made the same mistake. We regularly resist, ignore, or deflect God’s commands—just as Moses did.

We need to remember that if God isn’t Lord of all, He isn’t Lord at all.

God knows us better than we know ourselves, so we must trust Him and obey what He tells us to do. When we tell God our weaknesses, we aren’t sharing anything He doesn’t already know.  Moses was not the only one, many throughout God’s Word struggled because of inability to grasp all that God wants to do in us.

The will of God will never lead you where the power of God can’t enable you, so walk by faith in His promises.

Be careful what we ask of God!  God appointed Aaron to be the spokesperson for Moses, but Aaron wasn’t always a help to his brother. It was Aaron who cooperated with the people in making the gold calf (Exodus 32).  Aaron and his sister Miriam were critical of Moses and his wife and brought trouble to the camp. Moses got a concession from God and had to live with the consequences.

One of the most painful judgments God can send is to let His people have their own way.

Worry slanders the promises of God.  Moses had expressed human worry and fear of the unknown based on his assumptions of what he thought would happen. Oh, dear friends, worry is probably our worst enemy to all the God wants to do in and through us, right?! Most of us respond first with; God, “what if…”.  Moses assumed that the Israelite elders would not believe his message or accept his leadership, but they did, and so did the rest of the nation when they saw the demonstration of God’s power in the signs. Not only did they believer, their response was praise to God in worship!  Rescue is on the way!

When we fully realize the depth of love and concern God has for us; is our first response to God worship in grateful thanksgiving?

Worship is the logical response of God’s people to God’s grace and goodness.

Back to the first question—Was Moses all in?  Eventually. 

God became frustrated with Moses but never gave up on him.  Oh, how we must frustrate God when we ask for less than God’s best for us.  But God never gives up on us.  It is not in His nature.  So we must never give up on God.

Looking ahead, we will read and observe events that proved that Moses was very capable of speaking God’s words with mighty power, both to his own people and to the king of Egypt. God in a surrender Moses did that.  As the history of Israel unfolds, you find Moses delivering some eloquent messages in the power of the Lord. The Book of Deuteronomy records his magnificent farewell speech at the end of his life on earth. 

Are we all in?  Jesus is our Rescuer who saved us from all that is not God in us.  To Him be the glory, honor, and praise!  Do we trust Him?

Lord,

Thank you for all the gold nuggets of truth that stirs our consciences this morning.  I will meditate on your great works portrayed through all those who believed and followed you all the days of their lives.  Cleanse and purify our hearts, renew our thinking as we fix our attention on you.  Refresh our souls by your mercy.  Restore the joy of you in us and us in you as we lay ourselves before you as an offering to you.  I surrender all.

In Jesus Name, Amen