The Old Testament reading is Exodus 4:1-17. And this is the inerrant and infallible word of God. 

Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’”. The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff”. And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail – so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand, “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”. Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak”. And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak”. So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign.  If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile, and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” 

But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Oh my Lord, please send someone else.” Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. And he said, “Is there not Aaron your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you. And when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people And he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand the staff with which you shall do the signs.”

And now let’s turn to 2 Corinthians. I changed my mind since I printed the bulletins instead of 1 Peter. The New Testament reading will be 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. 2 Corinthians 12, 7 through 10.

And the Apostle Paul, in this passage, he learns the lesson that Moses would need to learn, and that is that in our weakness, God’s grace is sufficient for us. His power is made perfect in our weakness. So 2 Corinthians chapter 12:7-10. 

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Turn back to Exodus chapter four, since this is our sermon text for this morning. When you hear the name Moses, one image that may come to your mind is the image of the actor Charlton Heston.

And I suspect that for some of you, you may have never heard of Charlton Heston. He was actually a little bit before my time. But he played Moses in the great epic movie, The Ten Commandments. And the Moses that he portrays in that movie, at least the little bits that I have seen, is a man who is imposing, powerful, determined.

But the Moses that we see in this passage is far from such a strong and confident figure. In fact, this Moses that we see here is rather fearful and unsure. He is unsure of the promises of God. He is unsure of his own abilities, his capabilities.

He’s hardly a picture of imposing fortitude and confidence. But this Moses, the Moses that we find in the Bible, true Moses is a Moses that you and I can easily identify with when it comes to our own obedience to Christ and to his call and his commandments because we also can be that God is pleased to work through in accomplishing His holy, wise, and redemptive purposes in this world. And that truth that God works through weak vessels, even those who struggle with unbelief, that truth is demonstrated in this passage, in this conversation that we heard between the Lord and Moses.

This is the conversation that took place at the burning bush when the Lord appeared to Moses and in this passage Moses gives God reason after reason why he can’t do what God called him and commanded him to do and that is God’s command on Moses, his call was to go to Egypt and to lead the people of Israel out from Egypt to rescue them from their bondage there and each time Moses gives a reason why he can’t do this He shows his weakness, his imperfections, even his lack of faith and trust in the Word of God. However, each time Moses gives God a reason for not sending him, God responds with an answer, an answer that reveals God’s grace towards Moses, his patience, but also his power, that he will be sufficient for Moses. He will be the one who will enable Moses to be faithful. And so he proves to Moses that all that he needs to be faithful to the Lord is the Lord himself and his promise to be with him. And what I want to see from this passage, what I want you and I to see from this passage is that God has already answered for you and me as well every time we tell ourselves, every time we tell God that we are incapable, unqualified, inadequate, unable to obey His call to carry out His commandments. God speaks to us in His grace and tells us why that is not true, but by His grace we are able to be faithful to Him. 

And so the first reason then, and there are three reasons that Moses gives to the Lord why he shouldn’t be the one to deliver the people of Israel out of Egypt. And the first reason that Moses gives to God is that the people won’t believe him when he tells them that the Lord appeared to him at the burning bush.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience when you have told somebody something and then in response they say something that makes you wonder if they even heard a single word that you have said. I know my wife has had that experience a couple of times and Moses here sounds like that person here who does not listen by what he says at the beginning of our passage. If you go back to the passage that we looked at last time in chapter 3 verse 18 we hear there God declaring to Moses very plainly, in plain Hebrew, declaring to Moses that the people of Israel will listen to his voice. So he assures him, the people will listen to you. And yet, despite that assurance, Moses acts as though he didn’t hear a word that God had said. Because he says to the Lord in verse 1 of chapter 4, he says, “but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, the Lord did not appear to you”. 

Now it’s easy for us sitting here today to criticize Moses for his failure to listen to the Lord, to believe the very clear words of assurance that God gave to him that the people of Israel would listen to him. But before we criticize Moses, we need to look at ourselves and realize that Far too many times we have done the very same thing. We have been just like Moses. How many times have you caught yourself thinking or acting in a way that betrays the fact that you simply are not believing the Word of God? You’re simply not believing what God has promised and has revealed to us in the Scriptures. Maybe you find yourself wracked with anxiety.  You’re overcome with fear, with uncertainty about your future. You don’t know how things are going to work out. You don’t know how ends are going to meet. And then you realize that you have failed to remember and believe the promise that God makes to you in his word, that he will provide you with all that you need. The Lord said, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. 

Or maybe you’re facing a situation where you know that there is something you must do that is right, that is pleasing to God and yet that obedience in that matter is very fearful because there will be consequences. Consequences that are difficult, perhaps even painful, perhaps a difficult conversation you have to have with somebody or refusing to do something that someone expects of you because of your faithfulness to Christ, whatever it is, at that point you’ve forgotten that God promises that He will be with you, He will protect you from any harm –  that is anything that could harm you eternally or truly.

And so we find ourselves so often that we too, like Moses, act like we haven’t heard a word that God has spoken to us. We struggle with unbelief. Like the man who cried out to the Lord, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. We believe and yet so often we find ourselves disbelieving. But this is why we should be encouraged by the response of God to Moses here. God doesn’t rebuke him for his failure to believe. He doesn’t denounce his unbelief, but he gives him grace. He gives him grace to increase his faith. And he does this by way of giving to Moses three signs, three miracles that he will do before the people of Israel. And these signs that the Lord gives to Moses, on the one hand, they are signs that will foster faith in the hearts of the people of Israel. So these are signs that will help the people of Israel to put their trust in the message that Moses preaches to them.

But at the same time, because Moses himself is struggling with unbelief, these are signs that will minister to Moses as well. These are signs that are meant to strengthen his faith and trust in the Word of God. And so we’ll look briefly at these signs. 

The first sign was this, the staff of Moses that turns into a serpent. And so when Moses throws the staff on the ground at the command of the Lord, it becomes a serpent. and just as any sane normal person does when a snake slithers into his path Moses is startled, he’s fearful, he begins to run the other way but then God commands Moses to pick up the snake and when he does so Moses proves to himself that he really does have faith in the Word of God because he does what God commands and notice the Lord commands him to pick it up by the tail this would be the most dangerous way to pick up a snake and yet Moses does so and it turns back into a staff. 

The second sign was the hand of Moses that became leprous. He puts his hand into his cloak. He pulls it out. It’s white as snow. It is leprous, a terrible disease. But then the Lord tells him to put his hand back into his cloak. And when he does and pulls it out again, it is restored. It is healed.  

And the third sign that God gave to Moses here is a brief glimpse of what will take place when the Lord will send his plagues upon the people of Egypt. And that is when Moses draws water out of the Nile and pours it on the ground, it will be turned to blood. 

And what all three of these signs have in common, and they seem to be unrelated to one another in many ways, but what all signs, what all these signs do have in common is this, that each one of these signs in its own way was a demonstration of the almighty power of the God of Israel, of Yahweh, the Lord, Moses’ God, his power specifically, his supremacy over all the kings and the gods of Egypt. 

For example, the first sign was the sign of the staff being turned into a serpent. The serpent, the snake, in Egypt was a symbol of royal sovereignty, power, and kingdom. If you can think of, you’ve seen pictures of the masks of a pharaoh and there’s always that cobra that’s on top of his head that symbolizes his kingly power and yet it is God who can turn a staff into a serpent and turn it back into a staff again. 

As for leprosy, this was not a disease that was unique to Egypt, of course. This was a terrible disease that afflicted people throughout that part of the world. But the Egyptians would have believed that it was incurable, and so this sign declared to the people of Egypt, what god of yours can cure leprosy, can inflict leprosy and take it away in a moment? 

As for the Nile River and the water of it, the Nile was the very source of life and prosperity and strength for the Egyptians. They depended upon it for their national welfare. And any god that could change its water to blood would be a god that could have complete mastery and control over the fate of Egypt, either for good or for ill. And so these signs were particularly meaningful for the Israelites living in slavery in Egypt because it testified to them that the Lord, their God, the God who sent Moses to them, that this God had absolute sovereign control and power over their captors, over the Egyptians, that he was Lord over their enemies. 

At the same time These signs were a testimony of the patience, the kindness of God towards His people and their unbelief. Not only the unbelief of the people of Israel, but the unbelief of Moses as well. God was patient with His people. He was patient with Moses. He did not need to provide any signs whatsoever.

His word alone, His promise alone should have been sufficient for Moses and the people of Israel to believe in Him and to entrust in Him as their Lord and Savior. But God graciously gave them signs to help their unbelief. And His kindness, His goodness in this is magnified by the fact that He gives them not one but three signs. And the signs worked.

The Lord used these signs. We read later at the end of chapter 4 that when Moses did these signs before the people that they believed, they believed in Him. And so God used these signs to authenticate, to testify to the truth that the message that Moses proclaimed, that the Lord had sent him to bring them salvation, that this was truly from God. And God did the very same thing when the greater Moses appeared, when Jesus the incarnate Son of God when he came from heaven into the world he also like Moses had a message to proclaim he came preaching a message of good news the coming of the kingdom of

God he called upon people to believe his message that in him, in himself, the Son of God that the kingdom of God had at last arrived for the people of Israel but he not only preached But God in his mercy and patience with his people, he worked through Christ to give signs and wonders to testify to the truth of the message that Jesus preached. Of course, unlike with Moses, Jesus himself worked the miracles that he worked. He did the signs by his own power because he is and was God in the flesh, God incarnate.

But he did these signs, not just to impress the Israelites, not just to show that he was powerful, but he did them in order to work faith in their hearts, to confirm his teaching, to authenticate his message. Jesus said to the Jews who refused to believe in him and his preaching, he said, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, believe the signs, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father. And so both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament we see God graciously accommodating the weakness of his people, patient with their unbelief, giving them signs to testify the truth of the message that Moses preached and later that Jesus preached. But that raises a question for us today.

What about signs and wonders in our time? Why doesn’t God give us such signs today so that people will come to believe in Christ? Oh, I wish I had a staff that I could throw onto the ground and it turns into a snake and I could pick it up again and it turns into the staff. Wouldn’t that be a tremendous help in bringing people to faith in Christ and say, this preacher, this message is truly from God?

Well, God could do that, of course. It would be a testimony to His grace, but today, It is the will of God that people believe upon the Son of God, that people believe in the Lord Jesus Christ simply on the basis of the preaching of the gospel, on the basis of the preaching of the Word of God. It is God’s will today that the gospel itself should compel people to come to faith in Christ.

This is what Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes from hearing, not seeing. Faith comes from hearing. in hearing through the Word of Christ.”

And so we live in a different time in which it is the preaching of the gospel that God uses to testify and to even to testify to His truth and to compel faith in Christ. However, even having said that, it’s not as though God has not given us any signs to confirm the truth of His Word. There is one great sign, one great miracle that God has given to us as confirmation, testimony to the truth that he has revealed to us concerning salvation in Christ. And that sign is this.

It is the empty tomb, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When Jesus spoke with the Pharisees and the scribes, they demanded of him that he would perform miracles and signs to prove that he was the Son of God. He told them this, he said, “an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Of course, referring to just as Jonah was delivered from the belly of the whale after three days, so the Son of Man will emerge from the belly of the earth in three days, victorious over sin and death.

That is the sign that God gives us that we might believe in his gospel message. And the truth of the matter is this, that if a person refuses to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, if he refuses to come to faith in Christ, if he refuses to repent of his sins and embrace Christ as his Savior, if he refuses this simply after hearing the testimony of the Word of God, after hearing the gospel, that same person He will also refuse to believe in God and in his gospel, even if God should do a thousand miracles in his sight.

So it is God’s will, not that we would believe because of signs and miracles, but that we should believe the gospel of Christ as it is proclaimed to us from his word. But in Moses’ day, he did show his grace, his patience, and that he gave these signs to Moses. He gave them to him to strengthen his faith and to instill faith in the hearts of the Israelites. And so first, Moses tells God that the people not listen to him. 

The second reason that Moses gives to God why he shouldn’t send him is because he is not a good public speaker. He is inadequate when it comes to speaking. In verse 10, Moses says, “Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and tongue”. Literally, Moses says this, “I am not a man of words. I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue”.

Perhaps you have had occasion to speak publicly before a group of people and you felt that your tongue was heavy. It wasn’t working for you. And that’s a common experience. In fact, I think Moses ought to be the patron saint of all preachers, unless a man is extraordinarily gifted like a Charles Spurgeon or a George Whitefield, he’s going to feel the same way that Moses did. I am not an eloquent man. I’m slow of speech. I’m slow of tongue.

Notice here that the text doesn’t say that Moses had some kind of physical speech defect. This has been a popular understanding of what Moses says here, but there’s no evidence in the passage that he had some kind of speech impediment. After all, Moses will go on to do a lot of public speaking, but what Moses is expressing here with these words is his total lack of confidence in his verbal skills. He is convinced that he simply doesn’t have the ability, the capacity to speak publicly to the people of Israel.

And so he, quote, “informs the Lord of this”. And what is God’s answer for the reason that Moses gives him here? Why he can’t be the one to lead the Israelites because he’s not a good speaker? Again, the Lord’s answer is gracious. He doesn’t rebuke Moses for his failure to trust and obey his word, but he reminds Moses of the truth of who he is as the Lord, and that as he is the sovereign God who creates and sustains all things by his power, by his word, he makes one hear, he makes another deaf, he makes one see, he makes another blind, he creates the mouth, he creates the ear, And if God is the sovereign Lord and creator of all things, if he is the one who gives all things and is able to take away all things, then he’s telling Moses how easily I am able to accomplish my purposes through you, Moses, no matter what limitations you may think that you have. And notice how the Lord doesn’t argue with Moses on this point. He doesn’t say, “Moses, you’re just being humble. I’ve heard you speak. You’re a really good public speaker.” No, what the Lord says to Moses is, “yeah, you may not be the most gifted speaker, but there’s nothing that’s impossible with me. If I have called you, to speak to the people of Israel, I will give you the grace to do so. I will equip you to do so. My power will enable you to do what you cannot do on your own”. 

And therefore, the Lord is telling Moses, you must simply trust me and obey my call. In verse 12, he says, now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. And a very important truth here is this, that because God is sovereign, because He is the Lord of all, He is able, and in fact He does, He works through even the most ordinary of people. He is able to do far beyond all that we think or imagine, even with the most humble of gifts and talents and abilities. Because when it comes down to it, it’s not really a matter of the giftedness, the abilities, the talents of man and how he might use them to serve God.

But when it comes down to it, it’s all about the grace and the power of God working through an imperfect instrument to accomplish his holy will. And God gets the glory. The more imperfect the instrument, the more glory that God receives. 

Of all the seminary professors I had, there was one in particular who was a very gifted preacher. But he had this very distinctive facial twitch whenever he spoke or taught, and it was very noticeable. You couldn’t help but see it. And a story that I heard was that when this professor was himself a student, he preached a sermon in his preaching class. The professor at the time was so distracted by this constant twitch that the professor told him that he should seriously consider becoming a radio preacher. Quite a backhanded compliment it sounds. But thankfully, my professor didn’t follow that advice and I can testify that despite the physical problem, despite the fact that it could be distracting, He was a very effective speaker and preacher, and I have no doubt that the Lord used him greatly in his ministry, preaching and teaching, despite that limitation. 

And as a believer in Jesus Christ, God calls each one of you to serve Him in some way. He calls you to serve Him. And I don’t have to tell you that we can be painfully aware of our own limitations, our own weaknesses, our shortcomings. But that is no reason at all not to obey the Lord and to serve him as he calls us. As the Lord reminded Moses, he is sovereign. He will use you, despite your limitations and weakness, to further his work in the world if you will but trust in him, obey him, and go forward in faith. And again, insofar as you are weak, this is only so that God can receive the glory.  As the Lord said to the Apostle Paul in our New Testament reading, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

So the second reason that Moses gives to God why he should not send him is because he is not a good public speaker. The third reason why Moses gives to God, or the third reason that Moses gives why he shouldn’t send him to Egypt is because surely there is someone better to send. And so Moses says in verse 13, oh my Lord, please send someone else. Surely Lord, there is some other Israelite that is going to do this better than me.

I like the way that one commentator kind of captures the essence of this passage with the title, “Here I am, Lord, send someone else”. And that’s so often the stance that we take. Here I am, Lord, send someone else to do this work. But now with this, Moses, he crosses a line.

He’s no longer simply being weak in faith, failing to trust in the Lord as he should, but now hears an outright rejection of the command that God has laid upon them. And for that reason, the text tells us that the Lord became angry with Moses. And yet, what’s remarkable here is that even in his anger, God is gracious to Moses.

Again, he doesn’t condemn Moses, he doesn’t rebuke him, he doesn’t abandon Moses and just brushes him off and finds another Israelite who will do this job better than Moses, but he provides help to him. He says to Moses that “Aaron your brother is coming out to meet you. He will be the helper in what I command you to do.” And so what God sets up then with Moses and Aaron is a prophetic relationship between the two. Aaron would be the mouth of Moses and all that God spoke to Moses, Moses would speak to Aaron and then Aaron would be a mouthpiece of Moses. So Aaron would be Moses is prophet, so to speak, and Moses would be like God to Aaron in that way. 

Verse 16, “He shall speak for you to the people and he shall be your mouth and you shall be as God to him”. And so again, in all three ways that Moses objects to this call, the Lord responds in a gracious and patient way. Even this last call, or this last reason that Moses gives, “send someone else”, the Lord responds graciously. Here’s a help to you, here’s Aaron, your brother. 

As we bring this to an end, I want to consider a moment with you, the very last words that the Lord says to Moses at the burning bush. What would we think that the Lord would say to Moses as sort of parting words from the burning bush?

This is one of the great episodes in the whole Bible. God appears to Moses out of this mysterious bush that keeps burning. He commissions him to go to Egypt to save the people of Israel. I would think that the last words would be something like, “Moses, I am the Lord, the God of your fathers. Now go in my name and bring redemption to my people” – something dramatic like that. But rather the Lord says something to Moses that almost sounds like an afterthought, almost like a throwaway line. He says in verse 17, “And take in your hand this staff with which you shall do these signs.” It’s almost like when you were a kid and you’re about to run out of the house and your mom says to you, hey, don’t forget your jacket. You know, Moses, don’t forget your staff. 

And so why did the Lord make these the last words to Moses at the burning bush? If you think about it, it’s not likely that Moses would forget his staff. He’s been shepherding for 40 years now. The staff is probably more like an extension of his arm than it is something separate from Moses. It’s more likely that Moses would forget the sandals lying in the sand beside his bare feet. But the reason that the Lord spoke of the staff in these last words to Moses is because the staff would become the focal point of the power of God at work in Moses. It would be the constant reminder to Moses that the Lord is with him in all that he will do as the leader and the Savior of Israel. The staff. This would be the instrument by which Moses would accomplish God’s purposes. It was with the staff that Moses would bring the ten plagues upon Egypt. It was with the staff that he would part the Red Sea. It was with the staff that he would strike the rock and water would flow from it for the people of Israel in the wilderness. 

And so the simple shepherd’s staff became the means of Israel’s salvation. And it was not because of the power of the one who held it, Moses, but because of the power of the one who was with Moses, that is the Lord. In fact, the staff became so much the instrument of God in the hands of Moses for God to do all that he would do for his people Israel, all the signs and the miracles and the things that he would do that the staff is no longer even referred to or at least in one place, it’s no longer even referred to as Moses’ staff, but later in the chapter it’s called the Staff of God. This is now the Staff of God. God will use this lowly shepherd’s staff to bring salvation to his people.

And this was a reminder to Moses of the truth that he himself was no more than a staff. He too was just a mere instrument in the hands of Almighty God. If you think about it, Moses was in many ways nothing more extraordinary than a shepherd’s staff. Yes, he had an extraordinary education. He was brought up in Pharaoh’s household and all of that, but for the last 40 years he has been doing nothing but shepherding sheep out in the wilderness. He has no standing with the people of Israel. In fact, they were ready to accuse him of murder before he fled. We have seen he was weak and imperfect, and yet God used this Moses to be the instrument by which he would accomplish his purposes. 

And there are two lessons that we can learn from this truth that God worked through Moses. The first is this, this shows us Christ. Now, of course, Jesus was perfect. He was not weak in the sense of being unrighteous or sinful or distrustful of God’s Word, but he was weak in the sense that according to the world’s definition of power and authority and strength, Jesus had none of that. His weakness was a voluntary weakness. Though he was God, he made himself man. He set aside his divine prerogatives as the Son of God to manifest his infinite power and glory and instead he came to us in the form of a servant, a mere man.

As a man he had no armies to conquer the world, he was no king, he was no ruler, but he was obedient to the will of his Father, even to the point of submitting himself to the cursed death of the cross. But it was there, in that display of weakness, the object of human hatred, absorbing the wrath of God in himself, bearing the shame and the pain of the cross, that weakness and that shame that was his, it was at that very place that Christ conquered death and hell and sin forever, where he exercised divine power in conquering His enemies and our enemies. And so it was through the, quote, weakness of Jesus that God exercised His power that brings us salvation.

And the great principle here is that in His saving work, God uses that which the world considers weak in order to overcome all that the world considers strong. 1 Corinthians 12:7, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise”. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. He used this lowly shepherd staff to perform his wonders in Egypt.

He used a very weak and humble Moses to deliver his people to Israel. And he used the cross of Jesus Christ to overcome all our enemies. And he continues to use weak means to accomplish his powerful purposes, the preaching of the gospel, the mere preaching of the Word of God in all of its weakness, according to the worldly understanding of strength. God uses that for salvation.

Secondly, the fact that God uses Moses despite his weakness shows that God can use even you to accomplish his purposes. The Lord said to Paul when he prayed that God would take away his thorn in the flesh, whatever that was, he said, my power is made perfect in weakness. And really this is the answer that the Lord gave to Moses in every one of his objections. Moses, don’t tell me about your weakness, your limitations, your frailties, but focus on my word. I will be with you. It is my power that is made perfect through your weakness. My grace is sufficient for you. Trust and obey.

And the Lord says that to you and me as well. I want to end this morning by reading a quote from a sermon that was preached by Francis Schaeffer, a wonderful title of the sermon, “No Little People, No Little Places”. And in this passage he refers to the staff of Moses. I’ll read this and we’ll end with that.

Consider the mighty ways in which God used a dead stick of wood. God so used a stick of wood can be a banner cry for each of us. Though we are limited and weak in talent, physical energy, and psychological strength, we are not less than a stick of wood. But as the rod of Moses had to become the rod of God, so that which is me or so that which is me must become the me of God. Then I can become useful in God’s hands. The scripture emphasizes that much can be done from little if the little is truly consecrated to God. 

Let’s pray.

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