This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day four of week one of our look together through the book of Exodus, so
that means we're in Exodus chapter four. We began to look yesterday at Moses'
meeting with God in the burning bush. How in an ordinary experience, in the
midst of the routine, God surprised him with an invitation to life, to change,
to freedom.

And Moses immediately had some questions, in all honesty, and God answered those
questions. Moses says, "Who am I to do this? " God says, "I'll be with you.

" Moses says, "Who are you then, God? " God says, "I am. I am the one who meets
every need.

" And Moses isn't finished. He now, at the beginning of chapter four, has a
third question to ask God. "Who am I?

Who are you? " Third question is, "What about them? What about these people
you're sending me to?

" In chapter four, verse one, Moses answered, "What if they will not believe me
or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'? " Moses is saying,
"God, I hate to be difficult, but I got a bad feeling about this. I'm going to
go to the people of Israel and I'm going to say, 'Listen, I heard this voice
come out of a burning bush, and it's all going to go downhill from there.

What are they going to say? God, I've been down this road before. I mean, I
killed an Egyptian.

That's better to them than maybe this burning bush, and they didn't listen to me
then. They're not going to listen to me now. They will not listen.

They are keeping me from being set free. " The question is, what are they
keeping you from? What things or situations or people that you haven't even
faced yet maybe, or haven't faced for a long time, are keeping you from God's
best for your life, from obedience to God in your life?

What if they reject me? What if they don't like me? What if they look down on
me?

What if they ignore me? What if they humiliate me? And so we never even take the
risk.

What do you do? Because we all face this. What do you do when you're paralyzed
by fears of what they will think or do?

You have to get your eyes off of them. That's the only way to get past this. You
have to get your eyes off of them, and that's God's answer.

Moses' question is, "What about them? " And God's answer to Moses in verses 3 to
4, beginning in verse 2 and all the way through verse 5, actually, is, "What's
in your hand? " What's in your hand?

Get your eyes off of them, Moses. Look at what's in your hand. Listen to this
famous passage of Scripture.

Then the Lord said to him, "What's in your hand? " "A staff," he replied. The
Lord said, "Throw it on the ground.

" Moses threw it on the ground, and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then
the Lord said to him, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail. " So Moses
reached out, and he took hold of the snake, and it turned back into a staff in
his hand.

"This," said the Lord, "is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of
your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has
appeared to you. " God had an answer, and his answer was, "Quit looking at that
unknown them and start looking, Moses, at what's in your hand. " God uses
familiar things to take care of Moses' imagined fears.

The answer to the "them" question is, what they are keeping you from in your
life is you take what's in your hand and you place it in God's hands. You break
free when you realize you cannot give God what you don't have, and you don't
have to worry about giving to God what others have. All you can do is give him
what you do have.

You give him what's in your hand, and for Moses, that was his staff. That's what
he directed the sheep with. It was like a wallet for a guy today.

It was with him every day of his life, and God says, "Through that, Moses, I'm
going to show the people that I'm with you. " When you think about you taking
what's in your hand and putting it in God's hands, God's not looking for the
extraordinary here. It was just an ordinary staff.

God is looking for ordinary people giving ordinary things to him so that he can
use them in extraordinary ways, because that's when God gets the most glory. The
greatest glory. What about them?

God's answer is, "What's in your hand? Place it in my hand. " Now, you would
think, "That's it.

A staff became a snake. Okay, let's go, God. I'm charged up now.

" Moses still isn't finished. He's got one final question. In fact, he sort of
saved the big guns for last.

His last question is, "How about this? " The big this in Moses' life. In verse
10, Moses said to the Lord, "O 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. " God, you're telling me to go and speak to
Pharaoh and set the people free? I am slow of speech and tongue.

How about this, God? Take that, God. Here's something you've obviously forgotten
about.

God, I'm handicapped. I can't do it. There are all kinds of handicaps, you know.

You can be handicapped physically. I found often that those who are handicapped
physically have a lot to teach us about how to overcome the other kind of
handicaps we all face. You can be handicapped by your past.

You can think you're handicapped by your education or lack of education. You can
think your family is a handicap. Your age is a handicap.

Your health, your emotions, your mind, your circumstances, when you start
pointing to that thing in your life, how about this, God, and say to yourself,
maybe even say to God in prayer, "I cannot because of this," then you really are
handicapped. We've all felt that way because the truth is we really are, all of
us, in some sense, handicapped. None of us are perfect.

All of us are weak. All of us face weaknesses in our lives. You may look around
and think there are those people who have it all together.

They don't. They don't. We all face weaknesses.

When we come to the big this in our lives, here it is, God, here's why I just
can't serve you, God has an answer, and his answer is, "I am in control. I'm in
control. " Moses says to God, "God, I can't talk.

" In verse 11 and 12, God says, "The Lord said to him, 'Who gave man his mouth?
Who made him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind?

Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will help you speak and teach you what to
say. '" Moses says, "God, I can't talk," and God says, "Who made your mouth?

" God's saying, "I'm aware of your handicap, but I also want you to be aware of
my power. " God is aware of your shortcomings, more aware than you are, but he
also wants you to be aware of his overcoming strength. The issue is not God
creating you in some perfect way so that you feel like you could do it all on
your own.

We've already seen that doesn't work. The issue is taking whatever you feel like
is keeping you from being able to serve him or be set free or love him or love
someone else and realizing God's in control even of that. And even that thing
that most embarrasses you, even that thing that you most wish was not in your
life, even that thing that in heaven is going to be done away with once and for
all, God can use in his power even that.

Not that he wants that in your life. God who is a perfect and good God works in
our lives even in an evil world where Satan throws things at us, and he can use
even that. God reminds Moses that he understands that he's in control, and God
tells him, "I'm going to help you speak.

I'm going to teach you what to say. " As Moses listens to this, it can help him
to get, it has the power to help him to get unstuck from something that had kept
him stuck for year after year after year in his life. We get stuck.

Some of us are stuck in our little world, just this little tiny world we made of
ourselves. How do you break out? You realize that God is bigger.

Some of us are stuck in our big world. Our lives are filled with success and
energy and fulfillment. You feel like you're in charge even sometimes, but
you're stuck there.

How do you get stuck in a big world like that? Because your world isn't big
enough. There's more to life than the 70, 80, 90 years that you're going to
spend on this planet.

Wouldn't it be a tragedy to end your life and realize that you'd become so stuck
on the short-term success of just you, you totally missed, not only preparing
for the long-term being with God in heaven, but also serving towards that
long-term. Moses knew about both. He'd been stuck for 40 years in a big world as
a prince in Egypt, and now, the second phase of his life, he's been stuck for 40
years in the little world as a shepherd in the desert.

D. L. Moody's famous quote on the life of Moses is, "Moses spent 40 years
thinking he was somebody.

Then he spent 40 years on the backside of the desert realizing he was nobody.
Finally, he spent the last 40 years learning what God can do with a nobody. " It
didn't matter that Moses was handicapped or felt handicapped.

God had something he wanted to do through his life. The same God who called and
sent Moses is still meeting people today who are just as uncertain of themselves
as Moses was, and he wants to reveal his purpose in your life. He wants to
release his power in your life.

Let's pray together. Father, you might just pray this prayer. Father, you have
my attention.

Thank you that you are promising to be with me. Thank you that you are willing
to meet my needs. And thank you that you can use me just as I am.

That it's not a matter of my confidence. It's not a matter of my past. It's not
a matter of what I think of myself.

It's a matter of my trust in you. No matter what I face, God, I can be confident
that you are in control. That's where I put my confidence right now, today.

In Jesus' name, amen.