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Moses speaks like God to Pharaoh—Exodus 7:1-7

God’s commission seemed impossible to Moses, but God reiterated his call (Exod 6:28-30). Before sending him back, he addresses Moses’s fears.

Not only was God far more confident than Moses that Moses would be effective in his commission, but he assured him with strong words. Pharaoh, who considered himself a god, might not want to heed mortals. But as the true God’s messenger, Moses would speak to him as the voice of God, with Aaron being his prophet (Exod 7:1). (Contrary to the views of a few later confused readers, it is clear that God speaks figuratively in terms of Moses and Aaron representing him rather than being him; see v. 2.) In plagues announced through Moses, God would even strike the gods of Egypt (Exod 12:12; Num 33:4), including the household of Pharaoh himself.

Because God knows what he can do through us when he calls us, he can have confidence in his calling for us and our consequent effectiveness. Our effectiveness, of course, comes from him, and is limited to the sphere of our calling, which is not always “success” by the world’s standards. What matters is that it is success by God’s standards. God rarely calls people to do what we can do solely by our own strength; he delights to show his power through vessels that, on their own, appear weak and lowly.

But if such words gave Moses a sense of encouragement, God’s next words would remind him that more tests awaited. Yes, Pharaoh would send God’s people from his land (Exod 7:2). But first God would harden Pharaoh’s heart to not listen, so God could display his wonders in the land (7:3-4). Undoubtedly Moses, like most of us, would prefer for God not to harden Pharaoh’s heart; after all, softening his heart would make things much easier.

But the easier way is not always better. The Lord here declares his reason: Pharaoh’s resistance allows God to respond with signs of judgment—so that the Egyptians might know that he is the Lord (7:4-5; cf. 14:4, 18). God had raised up and allowed to remain this particular, resistant Pharaoh (9:16), and would continue to harden (cf. 4:21; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 14:4) a heart that also chose to be hard (8:15, 32; 9:34).

When we face others’ resistance to God’s plans, we can take courage that God is sovereign, and also take courage that God has a purpose even in events that seem hard for us. For that matter, the delay would be helpful even for the Israelites, who also needed to face testing to learn that the Lord is God (10:2; 16:12).

God knew whom he had chosen; he knew what Moses could be better than Moses did. Thus Moses and Aaron obeyed his command to go again before Pharaoh (7:6).

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God uses little people—Exodus 6:28-30

The last post discussed how Exodus uses Moses’s genealogy (Exod 6:14-25) to underline the weak sort of vessel that God chooses to use. Exodus frames that genealogy with Moses’s fearful protest in the presence of YHWH: “I’m uncircumcised in lips; so how is it that Pharaoh is going to listen to me?” As with some other framing devices in ancient oral literature, this one is somewhat inverted, transposing the order of the two clauses (6:12, 30).

Because Exodus emphasizes the point by repeating it, it seems fair for us to do the same.

Yet the Lord had already answered Moses’s objection earlier. “I’m not a good speaker,” Moses protested, “and my mouth and tongue are heavy!” (4:10). “Who made a person’s mouth?” the Lord demanded. “I will go with your mouth and teach you what to say” (4:11-12).

Who are we to question God’s call? Who are we to evaluate by the world’s criteria? God will back up what he calls us to do. Some speakers who do not sound eloquent are nevertheless anointed by God in such a way that people’s hearts are changed. Eric Liddell did not have the best form, but God made him fast. Unlike George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards was not the most eloquent speaker, but the Spirit could fall when he simply read a sermon. Natural gifts are a blessing, but for God’s call we cannot depend solely on them. We depend on the one who called us, and he can gift us in new ways as he chooses.

If God gives you ways to fulfill your calling better, take advantage of them. But don’t think that God cannot use you because you are too small. God uses especially those who know they are small. As mentioned earlier, someone once introduced Hudson Taylor, nineteenth-century founder of a very effective ministry to China, as a very great man. When Hudson got up to speak, he countered that he was a very small man with a very great God. He understood the ministry principle revealed in this passage.

Ultimately we are called to speak whether people will listen or not (as in Isa 6:9-13; Jer 1:17-19; Ezek 2:5-7; 2 Tim 4:2-5). Sometimes the fruit comes later (cf. Acts 7:58). It is not our role to predict which seed will bear fruit, but we can trust that it will always be enough; God’s message will bear fruit in its time (Isa 55:10-11; Mark 4:14-20, 26-29).

Jeremiah lived to see his land devastated and his people enslaved; yet a generation beyond him, God’s people recognized the truth of his message and never again turned to physical idolatry (2 Chron 36:21-22; Ezra 1:1; Dan 9:2). Paul lamented that all Asia—the place of his greatest ministry (cf. Acts 19:10, 17, 20)—had turned away from him (2 Tim 1:15). Yet his writings have shaped and challenged the church for two millennia.

Moses could not enter the promised land, though God did allow him to see it (Deut 34:1-6). The next generation, growing up under God’s revelation, apparently treated Joshua much better, but Moses faced opposition even from his own people. Yet God fulfilled the purpose for which he raised Moses up. We later see the same principle regarding David: he died, “after he had served God’s purpose in his own generation” (Acts 13:36). We should never forget that we are each only part of the story. Yet we can also celebrate the privilege that God has given us, that we do get to be part of his story, a story that will echo throughout the ages of eternity.

Whether our role seems to us big or small, let us fill that role with our whole hearts, and give all the honor to the story’s Author, to the Lord himself.

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A boring genealogy—Exodus 6:10-26

God calls us to serve his purposes and does not wait for us to figure out whether he might use us. God takes weak people and shows his glory by using us. Moses eventually learns this lesson, despite his protests, and so can we.

After Moses questions whether God’s call in his life is accomplishing anything fruitful (Exod 6:12), God simply reiterates his call (6:13). But then Exodus suddenly digresses to rehearse Israel’s genealogy up to Moses (6:14-25), before returning to the topic where the narrative started (6:26-30).

This genealogy includes only three tribes: Reuben, Simeon, and Levi. Why these three? They were the first three sons of Jacob by birth order, so this was the sequence in which one would recite genealogies (cf. Gen 46:8-11). The list in Exodus 6 stops with and fleshes out more fully Levi’s descendants (6:16-25) because that that family tree brings us to Moses, Aaron, and their kin.

But since the list will focus on Levites, why does it first briefly summarize the clans of Reuben and Simeon (6:14-15)? When we memorize something in order, sometimes it is difficult for us to recall it out of order. One accustomed to orally reciting a full genealogy of Israel might be accustomed to noting Reuben and Simeon (Exod 6:14-15) before reaching Levi (6:16-25).

Nevertheless, granted that point, an experienced narrator easily could have skipped them. At some point an editor could have removed this oral feature; why mention again Reuben and Simeon at all? The answer to this question might be related to our next consideration.

Why rehearse this genealogy here? Why not at the beginning of Moses’s story, like genealogies introducing Noah (Gen 5:3-32, esp. 32) or Abraham (Gen 11:10-30, esp. 11:26-30)? Maybe the narrator wanted to get listeners engaged in the story before digressing for a genealogy? After all, there was a genealogy in Genesis 46, toward the end of the Joseph story (and after the climax of its action), so it may have been too soon for another genealogy at the beginning of the Moses story.

But granted that a genealogy might not have fit best at the beginning of Moses’s story, Exodus does not even name Moses’s parents until this point (though his brother Aaron is already part of the story at 4:14). And if there was to be a genealogy, why specifically at this moment? And why does the narrative of Moses’s questioning frame this genealogy as a digression?

This genealogy, like its context, helps to depict in stark fashion how mortal and finite Moses is. Reuben, Simeon and Levi were all patriarchs who sinned grossly. They thereby forfeited their place of honor to Joseph, who received the blessing of the firstborn toward the end of Genesis (Gen 48:5; 49:4-7, 26). Moses and Aaron are mortals whose lives were set in wider kin circles of other mortals. That is, they are historically contingent individuals, dependent on and existing in a series of temporally limited generations in history.

In other words, who is this little Moses to question the big, infinite, eternal God? Probably to reinforce such a point, the narrative repeats what it was saying before it digressed. “This was the very Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, ‘Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their hosts.’ They were the very ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt to bring the Israelites from Egypt—that was this same Moses and Aaron” (Exod 6:26-27). The Hebrew text seems emphatic.

God commanded small people to do a big thing; the big thing succeeded not because Moses and Aaron were so great, but because God is so great. God did make Moses increasingly into the servant that God was calling him to be, but Moses was a vessel, an agent, a messenger through whom God worked, and Exodus is emphatic about this point. He is to speak to Pharaoh what God spoke to him (6:29); that is what a messenger does. Messengers of kings can’t boast as if they are kings themselves; we cannot boast as if we originated the message. We are just messengers, agents of the one who sent us.

Moses himself would not have wanted it any other way; he was, after all, the lowliest, humblest man in the whole world (Num 12:3). That was one reason that God could use him. God uses the weak things of the world to confound the powerful (such as Pharaoh), that the honor might belong to the Lord himself alone (Isa 42:8; 48:11; John 5:44; 2 Cor 13:4; esp. 1 Cor 1:27-29).

We all know ministers who got messed up because they got big heads, forgetting where God had brought them from. Should God choose to use us because we are weak, we must never to forget he chose us as weak vessels (cf. Deut 6:10-12; 1 Sam 15:17). He gets the credit, and we have the privilege of watching what he does even through us.

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Mission Impossible—Exodus 6:9-13

Have you ever been in an impossible situation? But if you’re following the Lord’s plan, he’s got your back.

The Lord summons Moses to go back to Pharaoh, so that Pharaoh will let God’s people go (6:10-11). God does not promise that Pharaoh will comply on the next try, but he is sending Moses nonetheless. Already rejected by the Israelites at this point (6:9), Moses protests that this is an insane predicament. His own people have not listened to him, and does God think that Pharaoh will listen to him (6:12)? Moses is still not very persuaded; from the beginning, he has insisted that he is not qualified, and Moses probably does not understand why God is still not listening to Moses’s objections.

Moses reminds God that Moses cannot speak well (6:12). Moses had already explained this to God in 4:10, but now he uses even more shocking language. Moses literally describes himself as one “uncircumcised in lips.” Perhaps he evokes his previous resistance to God’s demand that he circumcise his son (4:24-26), or implies that his lips are like those of Gentiles. But it is probably simply a way of depicting his lips negatively, so that his speech cannot persuade Pharaoh, before whom ambassadors would present skillfully prepared speeches.

Many of us can probably sympathize with Moses. We can be grateful for communicators who provide slick, precisely-timed presentations, but most of us are not at that level. Some people have great content and are great communicators, but most of us think of ourselves as fairly average. Yet God chooses whom he wills for particular tasks. Many of Billy Graham’s jokes fell flat, but God commissioned him with a mantle of authority in evangelism that drew people to Christ. Some people gifted in healing are terrible preachers, and some who preach well do not have great track records with healing gifts. God has gifted me to write after thinking matters through, but I don’t think quickly enough to excel in debates. When God calls us to do something we’re not great at, we might still not be great at it. But it is something that God wants done.

Undoubtedly much to Moses’s dismay, the Lord simply reiterates his instructions (6:13), this time to both Moses and Aaron (the latter initially appointed to compensate, if need be, for Moses’s reticence to speak, 4:14). These instructions pertain to both resistant entities: Israel and Pharaoh (cf. 6:12). Moses and Aaron are to bring the Israelites out of Egypt—something humanly impossible for them to achieve.

Only the Lord can make that happen, and, from Moses’s erroneous perspective, the Lord’s meddling so far has only made things worse. Pharaoh will surely not listen to YHWH. But Moses does not yet understand what YHWH can do to persuade Israel, Egypt, and, last of all by God’s design, Pharaoh himself. Along the way, Moses himself will come to understand. God’s instructions do not always make sense to us, even in Scripture, but God knows exactly what he is doing.

Moses faced opposition not only from Pharaoh but even from his own people. We should not expect all our service for the Lord to be easy. When you face discouragement and doubt as to why God would call you, remember that you are not the first to face this.