Out of Egypt: Send Someone Else

We're grateful for you and for the gifts of God that you bring with you into this space. As a church, we want to live in God's unfolding story, being transformed by Jesus, learning to truly belong to each other across our differences, as God invites us into freedom, joy, and boundless generosity. Our prayer is that whether this is your first time with us this morning, or you've been a part of our community for a while, you will feel the invitation of the Holy Spirit to join us in this vision. And if you're looking for a church home, we would love to become your church home, and I, in particular, would love to become one of your pastors.

Surveying the Landscape

We are in week six of Out of Egypt, reading Exodus alongside Acts, because the story of a people leaving Egypt is also our story. Getting out of Egypt is one thing. Getting Egypt out of you is the work of a lifetime.

Today we come back to the bush, because Moses is still standing there. And he is still talking.

Every week, the invitation is the same: Name your Egypt. Trust the God who brings you out. And take another step toward becoming the people God is forming.

Moses Runs Out of Reasons

Five times Moses tells God no. Five times. Put yourself in the text for a moment. You are standing in front of the Creator of the universe, barefoot, and you are saying no. Hannah gave us the first two last week. This morning we get the last three, and we get to watch what God does with a man who has run out of reasons.

1Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'?" 2Then the Lord said to him, "What is that in your hand?" "A staff," he replied. 3The Lord said, "Throw it on the ground." Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4Then the Lord said to him, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail." So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. (Exodus 4:1-4)

Notice that the third objection isn't about Moses anymore. It's about them. They won't believe me. And he's not wrong. These are people who have been under Pharaoh's boot for four hundred years. Hope is a hard sell to people who have learned not to hope. Moses knows how power works on a people. He grew up inside it.

And God does not argue with him. God asks him a question. What is that in your hand?

A staff. The most ordinary thing Moses owns. He’s been carrying it around for forty years. He leans on it. He uses it to move the sheep around. It’s just a staff. And God says, throw it down. Pick it up by the tail, which any shepherd will tell you is the wrong end. And the ordinary thing in his hand becomes the sign that will stand in front of Pharaoh.

Catch this. God does not hand Moses something new. God asks about what is already there. Moses says, they won't believe me, and God's first answer to his credibility problem is the thing he walked up to the bush already holding. Then God gives him a second sign, his own hand, and a third, the water of the Nile. Every sign is something Moses already has or can already reach. God isn’t asking Moses to go find something he doesn’t have. God is asking Moses to look at what he already has.

I Will Be With Your Mouth

Moses has watched his staff become a snake. He has watched his own hand go sick and come back whole. And then he opens his mouth.

10Moses said to the Lord, "Pardon your servant, 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." (Exodus 4:10)

Hear what he's doing. Neither in the past, nor since you have spoken to me. He is closing the door before God can walk through it. God could have said, Moses, that was before, you've heard my voice now, you've seen the signs. And Moses says, I know. This conversation has not fixed me.

Here is the thing about Moses. Everything he says about himself is true. Follow the story he's been telling since chapter two. I'm not an activist anymore. I had my shot in Egypt and I missed it. I killed a man. I ran. I have a king who wants me dead. And out here, I built myself a second chance. I'm somebody's husband. I'm somebody's father. I keep my father-in-law's sheep. And God, I am content in my second chance.

Not one word of that is a lie. Moses' perspective about himself is grounded in truth. And it is incomplete. He is telling a true story about himself, and he is telling a partial one. He has left out every part where God has been at work. And friends, that is the most dangerous story a person can tell, because it is true enough to believe.

We all live inside a story we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and about the world. Some of the stories we tell are kind. Some of them are harsh and unrelenting. And most of the harsh ones are true, which is exactly why we keep them. We really did fail that way. We really are from that place. We really did miss that window. The story isn’t a lie. It’s just incomplete. Because Moses has left God out of the story he’s telling about himself.

So watch what God does with it.

11The Lord said to him, "Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say." (Exodus 4:11-12)

The Hebrew is more intimate than our translation. God does not say I will help you speak. God says, I will be with your mouth. God doesn't offer to fix the mouth. God offers to be present in it. This is the same answer God gave the first objection last week. Who am I? I will be with you. I'm not eloquent. I will be with your mouth. The answer to Moses' inadequacy is not a renovation. It is a presence.

And notice something here that took me years to see. God being with you is not the same as God agreeing with you. God is with Moses and God disagrees with Moses in the same breath. We mix these up all the time. We take God's presence as an endorsement of the story we're telling, and we hurt people with it. God can be completely with you and completely unwilling to leave you inside your partial story. That is what love looks like at a burning bush.

Send Someone Else

And now Moses has nothing left. No more questions about God's name. No more concerns about the people. No more complaints about his mouth. He just says the true thing underneath all of it.

13But Moses said, "Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else." 14Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses and he said, "What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. 15You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. 16He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. 17But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it." (Exodus 4:13-17)

Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses. Don't rush past that. The anger is real. God is not mildly disappointed. Moses has been given the name, the plan, the signs, and the promise, and he says, send somebody else. And now, if you grew up in church the way I did, you know what's supposed to happen next. The smiter is back. Moses is about to be a pile of ash in front of the bush, and God is going to raise up a more agreeable Moses out of the ashes.

That is not what happens. God is angry with Moses. The text doesn’t hide that from us. But notice what God does with that anger. God gives Moses his brother.

What about your brother Aaron? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you. Already. Before Moses finished his fifth objection, Aaron was walking. God had already arranged the meeting. The provision was not waiting on Moses to get his heart right. The help was already on the road. I wasn't expecting that. I've read this story more times than I can count and I am still not expecting the mercy of God. Five times Moses says no, and five times God comes toward him, not with punishment, not with judgment, but with mercy.

And look at what the mercy is. God does not fix Moses' mouth. God sends Moses a person. God's answer to the last objection is not a better Moses. It's a brother whose heart will be glad when he sees you. That's how God answers "send someone else." God says, I did. I sent him to you. You are not alone, and you were never going to do this alone.

A New Beginning Never Feels Like One

Two weeks ago we said transition has three phases: an ending, a wilderness, and a new beginning. Egypt ended for Moses in chapter two. Midian was the wilderness, where he lost his meaning and learned to hear. And this is the new beginning. Here is what nobody tells you about new beginnings. They do not feel like beginnings. They feel like being asked to walk back into the exact thing you failed at. Moses is not being sent somewhere fresh. He is being sent back to Egypt. Back to Pharaoh's house. Back to the people who said, who made you ruler and judge over us?

And God's presence is over all of it. Over the ending, when Moses ran. Over the wilderness, when nothing happened for a very long time. And over the beginning, when the beginning looks like the end. I wonder if those forty years in the wilderness were necessary for Moses to become the kind of person who could finally hear what God was saying.

Name Your Egypt

Now the text turns and looks at us. We live in a country that is deciding, right now, who gets to speak and who gets taken away mid-sentence. A mother whose English is not good enough for the officer. A child whose zip code is a judgment. Pharaoh is a system, and the system has one sentence for whole categories of people: send someone else. Not you. Not here. Not now.

But the people the system tells to send someone else are the people God sends. The baby in the basket. The midwives. The fugitive with a heavy tongue. And the sentence works on us too. Where are we refusing God's liberating work because we have decided we are not qualified?

What is that in your hand? Not what you wish you had. What is already there. Name it. Then name the one place where you have been telling God, send someone else. Take what is in your hand and go there.

Let us pray.

God who comes toward us, we confess the story we have been telling about ourselves. We confess our fear. We have said, send someone else. You heard every objection and you did not stop coming. Be with our mouths. Show us what is already in our hands. Open our eyes to the one you have already sent down the road to meet us. Bring us out, and get Egypt out of us. We pray in the name of Jesus, whom you called out of Egypt. Amen.