Gifts.
We all love to receive them.
And God loves to give them. But God's gifts also come with a purpose.
Moses discovered this as he received the seemingly strange gifts of a staff that transformed into a snake, a leprous hand made clean, and Nile River water turned to blood.
How could these gifts possible help Moses to conquer Pharaoh and a foreign army?
In this morning's text (Exodus 4), we discover the hidden meanings of these gifts, and take a second look at the gifts that God has given us, too. Some of those gifts are NOT what we would have necessarily chosen for ourselves, but they are precisely the gifts God wants us to use as we share Christ and participate in his leading of people from bonded slavery to Gospel freedom.