A four year old who is dear to my heart visited this week, and when I announced that it was time to clean up all of our toys, she had as many excuses as Moses when He was called by God to return to Egypt.
“I am so tired,” she tried.
“My hands are too small,” she tried.
“It makes me sad,” she tried.
Excuses bubbled out of her unbelief as she attempted to see if I meant what I said.
Moses objected that the Israelites would not believe him or listen to him because they would not believe that God had really appeared to him. He feared unbelief.
God gave Moses three things to combat this.
First, God commanded Moses to throw his staff on the ground. The staff became a serpent, and Moses believed immediately! He ran from the snake until God told him to go back and face his fear, showing that Moses’s touch would transform the serpent into a staff once again.
The first thing God used to combat unbelief was His complete authority over good and evil. The serpent, a universal symbol of evil since the fall, has always been in the grasp of the One who holds all knowledge of good and evil.
Secondly, God told Moses to put his hand inside his cloak. When he drew it out, it was leprous, a death sentence in those days. When he again placed it inside his cloak, it was restored, as good as new.
The power over life and death evaporates unbelief. When the Israelites saw that God had placed life and death in Moses’s hand, surely they would believe.
Finally, God told Moses, “If they will not believe even these two signs…you shall take some of the water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground… it will become blood.”
Even if good and evil, life and death are not enough to convince us to believe in Jesus, there is always His blood. He changed the water to wine just as Moses changed the water to blood. These were pictures of the mingled water and blood that would pour from His side.
John wrote, “Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is He who came by water and blood- Jesus Christ; not by water only but by the water and the blood…Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
The signs God gave to Moses aren’t just for His people in long ago Egypt, but serve as reminders for us to today, cures for hard-hearted unbelief that would prevent us from believing in Him.
As I held out my hand to my young charge and offered her my presence in exchange for her unbelief and excuses, the Lord held out His hand to me. “Come. Follow Me.”
He draws near to us and holds out His hand- the same hand in which He holds good and evil, life and death, the water and the blood- bidding us to come and follow Him in obedience.
Sarah Dixon Young 