How would you respond to God if He comes to you and said?
• Listen I have an awesome task for you to accomplish.
• It will be part of my plan to redeem the world to myself.
• It will involve miracles, signs, and wonders.
• It will involve the splitting of the Red Sea and the leading more than million people out of bondage to freedom—how about it?
What would your response be? Would you jump at it and grab it?
• Chances are you won’t.
• Moses didn’t waste any time. He tells God: “Look, I’m not your guy.”
• He then rolled off a bunch of excuses, all of which didn’t really impress God.
Of course it didn’t impress God. God knows him, more than Moses knows himself.
• When God calls him, do you think He knows that Moses may not be that eloquent, if that is really true?
• Do you think God knows that Moses is “slow of speech and tongue”? (4:10)
God knows Moses before He even calls him.
• God knows you when He calls you to serve Him! He knows all about your handicaps, your weaknesses…
• Therefore to give Him excuses, to tell Him that you can’t, is really redundant.
What God is looking for is a vessel that is willing to be placed in His hands!
• Not someone who feels he is qualified and good.
• He wants someone who BELIEVES Him enough to do His work by His power.
PRINCIPLE 1:
Stop looking at your own puny ability and LISTEN to what God is calling us to.
Stop thinking about your ability and start thinking about God’s Word.
• If David kept looking at himself, he would not have faced Goliath.
• If Peter kept thinking about man’s ability, he would not have walked on water.
• If George Mueller looked at his own resources, he would not have started orphanages.
Stop thinking about what you can or cannot do.
• The first thing that Moses did was to look at himself – “Who am I?” (3:11)
• You’ll lose confidence in doing what God wants you to do if you keep looking at your limitations.
Moses started to list out all his inabilities, inadequacies, as if God did not know.
• God had a hard time convincing Moses, just as He has today with many Christians.
• God was angered eventually by Moses’ stubbornness and reluctance.
So you know how you can make God angry?
• Refuse to do what God expects from you.
• When God calls you, He knows all your shortcomings.
• He did not choose you because if you have great strengths and wisdom.
• God says, “Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” (4:12)
• God uses anyone who has a willing heart to serve Him.
Moses kept looking at himself. He wants to feel qualified to do the job.
• We do the same – whenever there is something to be done, we’ll look at ourselves.
• We focus on our abilities, and not at the work that God wants us to do.
• This is a mistake. You can never be “good enough” for God, on your own.
• We need God’s help. We need the gifts God gives to each of us.
When I ponder Moses’ experience, I thought of the disciples.
• They had a similar experience when a hungry crowd of more than 5000 people needed to be fed, and Jesus turned to them and said, “You give them something to eat.” (Mark 6:37)
• That was an enormous task. They were stunned by the question, just like Moses was taken aback by the size of this task.
• They probably wondered why Jesus would even ask it.
• After all, He would have known that they didn’t have the kind of money to buy dinner.
You see, when God calls you to a task, He knows all your limitations and inabilities.
• Yet He wants you to be part of His work, to rely on His help and complete the task.
• The Bible tells us exactly what Jesus was thinking – in John 6:6 “He asked this only to test him [Philip], for he already had in mind what he was going to do.”
The disciples were actually challenged to look to God.
• They had been with Jesus – watching Him, hearing Him, and learning from Him.
• Jesus wants them to learn how He operates in the realm of faith.
Like Moses, they started to look to themselves.
• They said to Jesus, "That would take eight months of a man’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?" (Mark 6:37)
• Moses said he is incapable, no one will believe him, and he lacks eloquence.
We make similar mistakes today. We start thinking about the problem.
• The disciples were figuring out how many people there were, how much money they had, how much the bread would costs, and where can they buy bread.
• Moses was thinking about what to say to Pharaoh and how he should introduce God; what he should say if they ask, “What is his name?” (Exo 3:13)
• We think of human ways to do the job. We end up trying to figure out what we’re going to do, instead of looking to God for what He can do!
God will enable us to do what He calls us to do. This is His plan all along.
• Jesus asked the disciples, “How many loaves do you have?” (Mark 6:38). And He did a miracle with it.
• God asked Moses, “What is in your hand?” And He performed miracles with it.
Let us hear Him clearly and trust Him to help us do the job.
One meal fed more than 5000 people. One rod led two million out from slavery to freedom. This leads me to the 2nd principle we can learn:
PRINCIPLE 2:
Give to God what you have, so that His work can be done.
God creates this world out of nothing, but He has chosen to accomplish His purposes today through you.
• God’s work is done when we offer up what we have.
• We’ve got to give it up, so that God can use it and do wonders.
• Give God the natural and let God change it into something supernatural.
A plain bar of iron is worth $5.
• When made into a horse shoe it can be worth about $50.
• When made into needles this same bar can make as many as $5,000 worth.
• When made into springs for Swiss watches, this bar of iron could be worth as much as $50,000.
Leave it alone, and that’s all you’ve got.
God asked Moses in verse 2 a simple question, “Moses, what is that in your hand?”
Moses replied, “A rod.”
When God asks a question, it is always for our sake, not His.
• God does not ask a question because He does not know the answer.
• He wants us to know the answer – to know that an ordinary tool when placed in His hands can do wonders.
A shepherd’s rod is a simple thing - a wooden stick about 2 metres long.
• It is a man’s tool, but with the potential to be God’s tool!
• God said, “Cast it on the ground.” Moses did and the rod turned into a snake.
• God had Moses pick it up again and it turned back into a rod.
Leave it in your hand and it will just be a stick. Give it to God and He can make it into a miracle.
• There is nothing special about this. God uses ordinary people and ordinary things.
• God says at the end - 4:17 “Take this staff in your hand so you can perform miraculous signs with it.”
If you keep it to yourself – whatever you own or have – it will remain a stick.
• Give it to God. Transform the ordinary into something miraculous, for His glory.
• Instead of waving the rod to direct sheep, Moses lifted it high to open the sea; he lifted it high in prayer and they won the battle against Amalekites (Ex 17:10).
This is what God can do with whatever we have—if we give it to Him!
• To man, it may be an ordinary skill, an ordinary talent, an ordinary gift, but give it to God and let it become a blessing to hundreds and thousands.
Think for a moment - what are some “rods” that God has placed in your hands.
Illust: RESOURCES ARE HERE IN THIS ROOM
Tony Campolo was giving a major address at a women’s conference. At a point in the program the women were being challenged with a several thousand dollar goal for their mission project, the chairperson for the day turned to Dr Campolo and asked him if he would pray for God’s blessing on the women as they considered what they might do to achieve their goal.
To her astonishment, he went to the podium and graciously declined. He said, “You already have the necessary resources to complete this project right here in this room. It would be inappropriate to ask God’s blessing when God has already blessed you. The necessary gifts are in your hands. As soon as we take the offering and underwrite this project, then we will thank God for freeing us to be generous, responsible and accountable stewards.”
When the offering was taken, the mission goal was overreached.
Then Dr. Campolo led them in a joyous prayer of thanksgiving.
...Campolo: “The Gift Is in Your Hand” (p.239, Illustrations Unlimited, Hewett)
Leave you with this thought:
Could it be that all the resources we need to grow the church are already here in this room?
God knows you all along, and He still calls you.
Don’t underestimate what God can do with the little gifts that you offer Him.
Ex 4:2 “What is that in your hand?”
