December 14, 2020
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in some Exodus? Here’s today’s reading:
Exodus 4 (NIV)
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’?”
Moses seems very much like many of us would respond to such a request from God. Even after all God’s signs he still makes excuses, he still tries to ignore the obvious call God puts on us. We don’t fully trust God to be with us threw difficult situations despite the power we know He posses and still look for reasons to not step out in faith
I love the story of Moses, but how close we came to not having the story at all. thank you Zipporah!! So true of how easy we can fall
Exodus 4
Exodus 1-4
Exodus 4
How good God is to give Moses and His people signs to assure that it is He that has sent Moses and is speaking through him. The self doubt that Moses has is common and is good when it leads to humility, faith and dependence on God. But it is bad when it causes us to question God and not follow His lead. What an example Mary is to us in light of the season we are in and how her response is completely different than Moses. May it be to me as you have said was her response, and that was just to an angel! Here it is God speaking and Moses balks to the point of annoyance, both to God and those reading the account. May we be more like Mary and not Moses in our willingness to follow God even when where He is leading is a little scary and beyond us. Because that is kind of the point….we’re not supposed to be able to handle it so we are dependent on God and He is glorified and not us.
And boy does God care about circumcision and even more so the covenant symbolized in it. God certainly was not going to allow Moses to represent Him before His people with his own son not being circumcised. One does wonder if God had impressed this on Moses and Zipporah and this was the last straw. Otherwise how does Zipporah know what to do when God shows His offense?
And the people of Israel do better than Moses at this point. They hear the message, see the miracles and learn of God’s action because He cares, and they worship. That is the fitting response to the revelation of God and His plan!
I see in Moses man’s struggle between self-sufficiency, obedience and dependence. How often does God ask us to do something and we decline because we only see our inadequacy as we only see our fleshly inability, OR we simply disobey in laziness, ignorance or fear of man? God either pushes and pushes until we move forward depending on him or He finds someone else to use.
29Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, 30and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, 31and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.
Exodus 4