Who made your mouth? (Exodus 4)
This is a continued study from It's Not About You - A Study on Exodus 3
Signs for Moses
1 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.”
*Exodus 4:6 The Hebrew word for leprous was used for various diseases affecting the skin.
Think...
Convincing Moses had become as difficult as convincing Pharaoh.
1. List all the things, signs and people God had already prepared to show to Moses. What do we notice?
2. Look at verses 3, 10, 13. What do we learn about Moses (and ourselves)?
3. Verse 10: Comment on Moses' attitude.
Feel...
4. Think of all the emotional reasons behind Moses' response to God. We probably will not be called to speak to a dictator today. But how are we like Moses?
5. Notice Moses' worry, his speaking eloquence, was totally irrelevant in all the following events. His other worry, Pharaoh himself, was also not his biggest problem. It was Moses' own people. Does this change the way you look at the things you worry about?
6. Verse 14: Indeed God is equally stubborn! Is He justified in his anger?
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