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Reach Out!
4 Then Moses answered and said, “But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you.’ ”
2 So the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
He said, “A rod.”
3 And He said, “Cast it on the ground.” So he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it.
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail” (and he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand), 5 “that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” Exodus 4:1-5 NKJV
I have chosen Exodus 4:1-2 before as a reminder that when God calls us, we must use whatever we have for God’s glory.
It might seem a feeble offering of talent and gift, yet God looks at our hearts and willingness more than the gift itself.
The interesting thing is that today I learned something new about all this when I read a bit further.
In the following section, (verses 3-5), we see that after casting all Moses has in his hand, at the feet of God, that rod becomes what it was intended by God to become.
A dead piece of wood becomes a frightening serpent. This serpent is part of the signs God has given Moses to use in Egypt.
A snake to convince the Israelites that God sent Moses, and later as a sign before Pharaoh.
Let us concentrate on the beginning of this:
Moses casts down the rod and God turns it into a serpent.
Appropriately enough, Moses fled from it. Being a woman, not fond of serpents, I understand his reaction quite well.
God then tells Moses to reach out and take that serpent, of which he is no doubt leery, by the tail.
This is, to my thinking, a real test of Moses’ faith.
Yet, we are told he reaches out and does just that.
He picks up the serpent by the tail and it again becomes the rod it was, until the time of signs before the Israelites.
It is no longer the fearful serpent.
When Moses obeyed God and DID EXACTLY what God told him to do at the time Moses was to do it, the serpent was changed.
It is now, once again, a dead piece of wood used as a rod. A rod in Bible times, protected against predators, guided and counted sheep and the like.
Perhaps, it was used as a type of walking stick at times for the shepherd, In all cases, not an item to be feared at all but rather a tool to help the owner.
How like our God.
He wanted His people to know it was indeed Him, the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Who had appeared to Moses. It was this God of their fathers Who sent Moses to them. Later, Moses was to show this sign again to Pharaoh as well.
God brought in all the other signs and wonders to follow.
Moses simply had to pick up the serpent by the tail in faith. This one moment is for Moses to do, and the rest is by God’s great mighty power.
The question today is whether you and I have reached out and grabbed our fears, no matter how frightening, so that we can fully obey God’s Will for us in all of our lives.
It made all the difference to Moses, and in OUR LIVES it will too.