God's Presence and Human Reluctance (Pt. 2) | Exodus 4:1–31

Exodus tells the story of a God who isn't distant, but moves toward his people in power and mercy. God reveals himself as I Am, leading Israel out of slavery and into the life-changing reality of his presence. My heart is very full and overwhelmed this morning, I want to be frank with you.

I think I know what's ahead. I've got a lot of ground to cover. It's a fantastic text, but more than that, the Holy Spirit of God is with us.

It's going to encourage us and cause us to feel the weight of this. I'm very confident of that. So much so that I'll be asking you to respond in some ways as we get to the end.

I trust that you will, and that you again will not be scared or worried or fearful. You'll obey the Lord as he calls you to respond. I suspect there are parents in this room who can identify with this.

You give your child a simple instruction, and it turns into a negotiation. That's what I thought I'd hear. Chuckles, I see some grins.

It's actually not surprising that it's humorous. How can an obedience moment turn into a bargaining session, right? With your offspring, how does this occur? That's what I'm looking for when it comes to response. Amen, that's exactly right.

I imagine God our Father chuckles when we, his kids, do the very same thing. You sense God pressing in on you. The Holy Spirit convicting you, calling you to deal with a sin in your life, to have a conversation with someone, to begin a new habit, to pursue obedience.

He's giving direction, he's giving instruction across a myriad of ways. You know God's calling you, speaking, directing, instructing, more obedience, deeper obedience, it's clear to you. But we say, and we begin to negotiate, I don't think I'm ready.

You don't know how much it's going to cost me. Somebody else could do more. I'm not good enough.

And a thousand other excuses that we give, to delay, to detour. You see, that scene is not new or unique. It's ancient.

It's as ancient as Exodus 3 and 4. You're there, right? We're going to see in these chapters, mainly chapter 4 today, Moses' continued negotiation with God. He raises three more objections. You recall the first two that Travis reviewed last week.

They were these, essentially. Moses asked, first of all, who am I? Then he asked, secondly, who are you? They seem a little bit tame. Well, they're escalating now.

We're going to see objections 3, 4, and 5, and their escalation. Now, to objections 1 and 2, we did learn this simple presence principle last week. And we're thankful for it because we see that in our moments of delay, in our hesitation, God meets us where we are.

He comforts us. This was our presence principle last week, mainly from Exodus 3. That God's presence not only calls us, but it comforts us. And it moves us from insecurity to obedience.

But the conversation isn't over between Moses and God. This is what Exodus 4 reveals to us. Let me take this chapter and unpack it for you.

I will do so in a quick fashion, so have your running shoes on. I want to show you the three objections, but there's a lot more to the chapter. But it does fit together.

This is what I think is so powerfully weighty about the chapter. So Exodus 4, here's objection number 3. Begins in verse 1. It's really all about outcome. Moses says, they won't, and God says, I will.

Follow along in the text with me. Moses writes this in the book of Exodus, chapter 4, verse 1. Moses answered, what if they won't believe me and will not obey me? But they say, the Lord did not appear to you. The Lord asked him, what is that in your hand? A staff, he replied.

Throw it on the ground, he said. So Moses threw it on the ground. It became a snake and he ran from it.

A normal guy. The Lord told Moses, stretch out your hand and grab it by the tail. So he stretched out his hand and caught it.

Not a normal guy. And it became a staff in his hand. This will take place, he continued, so that they will believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Love that covenant language there. Progressively, incrementally showing his plan being revealed and fulfilled. That God has appeared to you.

In addition, the Lord said to him, put your hand inside your cloak. So he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, his hand was diseased, resembling snow. Put your hand back inside your cloak.

So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, it had again become like the rest of his skin. If they will not believe you and will not respond to the evidence of the first sign, they may believe the evidence of the second sign. Don't read May as if he's saying they might.

He's saying they have the opportunity. He won't settle for unbelief. He's giving them double opportunity.

If they don't believe even the two signs or listen to what you say, they take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the Nile will become blood on the ground. What's occurring in these first nine verses is really pretty obvious.

Moses goes from insecurity to where he's trying to control outcomes. He, in essence, is dealing with his fears of what other people may say or do. I think he's fearing rejection.

Maybe he thinks he has a lack of credibility. A number of reasons, but he's now trying to control outcomes. To deal with this, God gives him three signs of divine authority.

They are the staff becomes a serpent and then back to a staff. The diseased hand is restored and the water turns to blood. Now, only one of these became one of the plagues.

But it's interesting that these initial signs aimed for Israel, not Egypt yet, were ways that God was going to show Israel. He had appeared to Moses and Moses is the redemptive mediator. He's the deliverer sent by God.

Now, just briefly, let me say this to you. I do think the signs show us some things. First of all, I think the first sign shows that Yahweh rules over evil.

If we take that the serpent is typical of evil, as in Genesis 3, Yahweh rules over evil. This diseased hand, which was probably leprosy, which to a covenant community would be an unclean person. And yet God heals and restores an unclean person.

God rules over uncleanness and disease. Then the water turning to blood. I remind you that Egypt sits on the Nile.

That is their essential source of life. Egypt doesn't survive without the Nile River. God says, I control even their essential necessity to survive as a civilization.

God's showing control and authority over everything in just these three simple signs. But I'd remind you of this as well. These signs are not about making Moses look powerful.

They're about proving God's presence. That's the point, right? How will they know that they can believe me, that you appeared to me? He says three signs. These are about proving God's power, God's presence.

Every single sign was intended to scream this. God is here and he's in control. Now you may be wondering about these signs and thinking, what did they say to us, Todd, about our own fear of outcomes? How can we apply this? And what signs should we look for? And should there be something that I should expect? It's a great and honest question.

Can I say to you that I don't believe this text is aimed at helping us understand what signs are for us? I do believe the New Testament speaks of signs of authentication. I'll talk about that on the podcast Tuesday. I think this text represents a unique moment in redemptive history.

And God is inaugurating covenant deliverance through a covenant deliverer. He's authenticating a mediator. Now, albeit, it's a temporary one.

It's a human one, so it is a flawed one. It's a, I'll use this word, shadowy one. Not as if something's going on wrong, but we don't find full and final fulfillment in Moses's mediatorial work or his redemptive work as a redeemer, right? But Moses does point to one.

And so I would say to you the signs here really point to what God did through Jesus. When the book of John tells us this, every sign in the book of John, every miracle, everything occurred so that you would see that this is Jesus, the Christ, the son of God, and would believe in his name. Christ came with signs.

He came to deliver. So just as Moses authenticated his presence and his power, showing he was from God through signs, Jesus fulfills that in a perfect way. And when he fed the 5,000, when he walked on the water, when he knew it was in the heart of men and women, when he healed disease, when he restored people, especially when he forgave sins, because at that moment, folks would say, hey, what are you doing forgiving sins? Only God can forgive sins.

And I'm sure Jesus has kind of leaned back and said, exactly. So do you see the point of this? It's really a pointer, a typological pointer to Christ, who in every way was the full and perfect and final and consummate presence of God. I remind you of this.

Exodus is the Old Testament gospel of John. John is the New Testament book of Exodus. They're great corollaries.

They both show us the presence of God manifest. In Exodus, it's through shadows and types. In John, it's through the substance and person of Jesus.

So I would say to you, first and foremost, don't make the signs about you. They're designed to show us that God will provide a redeemer, one to deliver us from bondage from our Egypt. Amen.

But let's keep moving. Objection 4 is about ability. When he realizes he can't make progress, arguing with God regarding Objection 3 and those issues, he moves on to Objection 4. Here he says, I can't, and God says, I made.

Notice verses 10 through 12. Moses replied to the Lord, Please, Lord, I've never been eloquent either in the past or recently or since you've been speaking to your servant because my mouth and my tongue are, say it with me, sluggish. Circle that word, underline it.

To that the Lord said to him, Who placed a mouth on humans? Who makes a person mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, I will help you speak, and I will teach you what to say. So at this point, he shifts from outcome control to ability. And he's focused on his inability specifically to speak.

He even says he's not eloquent, and he uses this word sluggish. It's the Hebrew word for heavy. So he's saying he's got a heavy tongue.

Now we're not sure what that means. It may mean he's stuttered. It could mean he just wasn't proficient in the language.

You know, he was raised as an Egyptian, then spent a good 40 years in Midian. So Hebrew language may have been still a, I wouldn't say a new thing, but it may have been a distant thing to him, possible. Maybe it means he just couldn't speak quickly.

And so he took his time, and he just felt like he was a little slow. We don't know. The text doesn't tell us.

It's fun to talk about. Here's what I think is more interesting. God's response was rooted in ownership, not ability.

You know, God never said in here, I'll help you be eloquent. He said, I made your mouth. I'll make sure it speaks.

He never even denied that maybe Moses was right. He doesn't say, oh, come on, Moses. He doesn't give him the old proverbial paddle about you can handle it.

He just says, Moses, I made your mouth. And when I need you to speak, I can make it work. The creator addresses the creature.

And it's not really like reassurance. It's not like pep talk. What he's doing here is he's showing ownership.

Watch this church of both the end, which is Moses, go to Egypt and deliver your people and the means. I made your mouth. I'll make sure it works.

So when God calls you to something, he's already aware of the end and the means, and he will empower you to do both. Church, hear this. God never calls his servants to a task without assuming full responsibility that you'll be sufficient for that task.

When he calls you to obey, he will equip you to obey. This should erase our fears and settle our doubts. This should end the negotiations, right? This should stop the bargaining.

We don't have liabilities from God's framework. We have opportunities for God's power to be displayed. What does 2 Corinthians 3, 5 say? Our adequacy is from God.

Later on in chapter 12, 2 Corinthians, Paul would say this, that the place of our weakness is actually the greatest platform for God's strength. So hear this. In your weakness, in the things you think you don't do well, in the things that you're afraid of, all the things that perhaps make you insecure, God made you, and he's not after your ability.

He's after your availability. And if you'll just obey, he'll make it work. We're not finished quite yet.

I'm not sure how brave Moses is, but he's braver than me. He's in round five of bargaining with God. Negotiating with Yahweh.

Stage five. I don't know if it's bravery or stupidity, but it begins in verse 13, and really this is now all about willingness. Moses simply says, I won't.

God says, I provide. Can I read the verses for you? At least part of them. Verse 13, Moses said, please, Lord, send someone else.

And then verse 14, which I think is the tipping point of the entire chapter, perhaps the entire conversation. Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses. You should underline that phrase.

We'll talk about it. It's a staggeringly sober phrase. Because we realize now Moses is no longer just delaying.

It seems like he's not excusing. He's now simply resisting. He's defiant.

Send somebody else. I'm not going. So God is angry with Moses.

And he provides Aaron, his brother. The Bible says that God says to Moses, he's on his way. You will speak with him and tell him what to say.

I will help both you and him to speak. Verse 15, I will teach you both what to do. He will speak to the people for you.

He will serve as a mouth for you. You will serve as a God to him. Take the staff in your hand that you will perform the signs with.

So God's already moved on past stage five. He's like, Moses, you're going to obey. I know the future.

Get your staff. Here's Aaron. Let's get busy.

But you can almost sense in the text this sense with God, like, Moses, I'm done with you. Like, get the staff. Get Aaron.

Let's get to work. So what do you do with this? Is this God being frustrated? Is God rightly angry or is this not a good moment for God? Let's clear the table and make sure we understand. This is not God frustrated like a parent who sins.

This is not God disciplining in a way that's wrong. This is holy displeasure that is biblically holy and wholly biblical. It's in the text.

God is perfect, so he does no sin. So this response is proper right. Here's why.

Because at this stage, at resistance, that is not a morally neutral response. You may could argue that objections one through four have a moral neutrality to them. I can't do that.

I can't speak. Or some other, like, what will they say? But when you say to God, yeah, I'm not going to go find someone else, you move to disobedience and defiance. That flares the nostrils of God.

Say, Todd, that's an interesting anthropomorphism. It's because the word anger in the Hebrew means to ignite or to burn. And when it's combined with the word for anger, excuse me, the word burn here means to ignite, to bring to a slow kind of a heat.

That's what the word burn means. When you combine that in the Hebrew with the word anger, the word anger is also the word for nose in Hebrew. It's like your nostrils flare because you're just a little frustrated rightly.

Can you picture it? Can you see it? This is the author's depiction of God's righteous and holy displeasure with Moses's resistance. He's had it. And so, fortunately, even in this moment of holy displeasure, which is right and just, he's merciful and he provides for Moses a partner named Aaron.

Isn't God good? Watch this. This is so humbling that God is patient with our progress. I mean, you have to see that in this conversation.

God is so patient with our progress. At the same time, he's committed to his purposes. He never once says, okay, Moses, let's rethink our strategy.

You got a point there. He doesn't back up on his demands. He doesn't change his end game.

And yet, you see a very patient father. Let me just say to you, I just want to testify. I am deeply grateful that God is patient with my very slow progress, and he's 100% committed to his purposes.

I don't know how he does that. Aren't you glad God is God? Amen, church. So these are the objections.

I'll just review them for you briefly. He fears the response of others. He says, they won't.

God says, I will. And so this is primarily about God's power. Second, he questions himself.

He says, I can't. God says, I made. This is really about God's presence.

And then finally, he just resists the assignment. And he says, I won't. But God says, I provide.

And here is God's provision on full display. And what I think is most interesting in this moment is that to all of Moses' protests of self, God gives himself. I made your mouth.

I'll give you a partner. I will be with you. Isn't it good that God gives us himself and all we want to do is use ourselves to protest? And there's no part of yourself that will override the surpassing greatness of God's self.

So I just have one instruction for you before we move on in the chapter. Obey. Follow God's call.

Do whatever he's asking you. The result of this conversation, this, I even hate to use the word negotiation, but what appears to be like that, this bargaining session, is that Moses does eventually obey. We see that.

This is what 18 through 22 unfold for us. I'm going to read all the verses here. I'll just read part of 18.

Look what he says to his father-in-law. Let me return to my relatives in, say at church, Egypt. He's headed back.

He's going to obey. Look at verse 20. So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey, and returned to the land of Egypt.

So he begins to obey. Verses 21 to 23 show us that God again, at least for the second time, tells him what's going to happen when he obeys and as he obeys. This is a beautiful moment too because God is ensuring Moses, I know what's ahead.

We'll handle it. I can tell you what's going to happen. He's building Moses' faith.

So this is kind of how the first 23 verses unfold. Three more objections, but God is patient with him and yet doesn't change his plan, moves him towards obedience, and even tells him it's going to happen. Let's get started.

So you're thinking, well, why can't that be the end? Why can't he just go to Egypt right then and we see the end of the story? Well, because apparently, beginning in about verse 24, Moses hits a personal crisis. And this is extremely important to the flow of the narrative. Because up to this point, Moses had been negotiating about public obedience.

He's been called of God to go to Egypt, deliver the people. He's the temporary mediator, we'll call it. He's the shadow of the real substance.

All those things are in play. He finally says, okay, I'll do it. And he starts going.

But on his way, verse 24 says, he camps overnight in a place. And this incredibly strange thing happens. Most folks love to skip over these verses like, I don't even get this.

Especially the opening phrase where it says that the Lord confronted Moses and intended to put him to death. Like he just convinced him to go, so to speak. And now he's going to put him to death.

Like, Todd, I don't understand why this is here or what it means. It's an honest question as well. Here's what's happening in these verses.

Moses is publicly obedient. He's willing and now moving towards being Israel's covenant mediator. Again, temporarily and not perfectly.

But he's the Lord's chosen instrument at this time. But guess what he's not done? He's not even obeyed the covenant in his own household. Now, I don't know if it was intentional.

I'll be frank with you. I can't distinguish in the text. This is a moment where Moses realizes, oh, my goodness, we've not even circumcised a Gershon.

Gershon's his firstborn. And I'm about to go tell our people, here's what God requires and here's what he's going to do. And if they don't obey in Egypt, they're going to be destroyed when I have not even done it in my own household.

I believe that's the point of the text. I personally would hold the opinion. That's why God intended to put him to death.

If he would deliberately disobey the covenant, you disqualify yourself from leadership. That's what he's thinking. So it's a tough read.

I'm not going to deny that. But it does make sense in the flow because he's saying to Moses, before you can lead my people, lead your family. And so it gets pretty intense.

His wife Sapphora, by the way, who's a Midianite, not Jewish. Moses was raised Egyptian. So there's a lot of cultural intersection happening.

She took a flint, cut off her son's foreskin, threw it at Moses' feet and says, you're a bridegroom of blood to me. And she leaves him alone. Excuse me, God led him alone.

And then she repeats that. It seems like she's frustrated, doesn't it? I don't know if she really was. It's hard to tell in the text.

I don't know if she was angry. I don't know if she was doing that like, hey, we have to do this. Or if she did it, you know, like, well, you wouldn't do it.

And so I did. I just don't know. The point is, this is a personal crisis for Moses.

And God confronted his private disobedience, even in the middle of his public obedience. Ouch, ouch, ouch. This is how committed God is to your sanctification.

Now, textually, historically, this scene answers a critical question for us, which I think is this. Can a covenant mediator lead God's covenant people while personally disregarding the covenant sign? And the answer is no. The good news is, this again points to Christ, because Christ fulfilled every bit of this, so much so that it's fulfilled forever, once and for all.

Amen? And so we love the way this points to Christ. But it does show us a larger framework by which God operates, and that is he confronts personal inconsistency, even when we are obeying publicly. He's after more than a show.

He's after your sanctification. Now, there's one other thing in this moment that I want to bring to your attention. There's some symmetry here that's quite beautiful.

It involves the sons. So just follow me. There's a lot more to explain here I can't this morning, but I just want to perhaps nudge you towards looking into this.

He stated in chapter 4, verses 22 and 23, that he was about to judge the firstborn of Egypt. After that warning, Moses' firstborn is in danger, as well as Moses. Moses, however, obeys, fulfills the covenant sign, and then God covers and forgives.

Pharaoh doesn't obey the Lord, doesn't bow the knee to Yahweh, and his firstborn is killed. Do you see the symmetry here? Do you see how the author is really kind of laying out for us the importance of obedience, not just personally, but even to our family? There's one more son that we should mention here at this point, whose blood was shed so that we could all be saved, and that's the Son of God, the perfect, final, consummate mediator between God and man. He came, fulfilled every bit of God's covenant, satisfied it wholly, and to all who believe on the name of Christ and his shed blood and sacrifice life, God forgives and welcomes them into his covenant family.

Amen. Well, we're at the culminating end of the conversation. We're through verse 26.

We've seen public obedience, a personal crisis. What happens now? Well, in a word, fulfillment and worship. Moses is now, and I can say this textually, he's fit to obey and to be God's temporary redeemer, mediator.

And so he goes to Egypt. He tells the people, along with Aaron, what God said. But look at verse 31, the culminating verse of this chapter.

All the objections and the crises and these moments that are hard to put together. Here's the end game. The people believed.

Isn't that what God said would happen? He did. Moses is now experiencing the fruit of his obedience. And when they heard that the Lord had paid attention to them and that he had seen their misery, they knelt low and worshiped.

At the end of the day, Moses is not the hero. God is. And they're worshiping God due to Moses' obedience and God's faithfulness, his presence, and his power.

This is a beautiful end to this set of chapters, the worship of God. So there's your 31 verses in the quickest I've probably ever taught 31 verses. There's so much more we could unpack and extrapolate, but it suffices to be true to the text in that way.

Maybe you're wondering, well, Todd, how does this help me get past my reluctance? Because the point of Travis' message and your message, these two chapters, the title was God's presence in my reluctance or human reluctance. So help me, Todd, apply this. Good question.

Again, third question. Honest. I appreciate that.

And I don't think it's wrong to make some of those. For instance, we could say this. God calls us to growth, which would be increased obedience.

So Moses, we saw, had an increasing obedience, and at times there was a crisis of faith, and he had to make sure it was internal and external. We could say we want to see an increasing obedience in our life. That's called growth.

Amen. We could say we want to see more public obedience, which I think is just another word for leadership. When your obedience goes public, people see it and they follow it, that's leadership.

You're unafraid. You're bold. You call for others to join you.

We need more of that in this church. We need more people to obey in visible public ways and asking people to join them. That's a good application.

Perhaps you're thinking about your own private obedience and that there may be a gap between the public and the private, and you're sensing a real call to integrity. You're going to confront some personal habits this week. You're going to stare them in the face.

You're going to deal with them. You're going to call it what it is. That's a good application.

You should ask yourself right now, what am I resisting that God is calling me to? What am I delaying? How am I detouring? Where am I sinning by excusing something or resisting something? Those are all worthwhile questions. You're going to find that God will give you every bit of himself so that you don't protest through yourself any longer. You don't use yourself as an excuse.

God is plenty sufficient to meet every one of those things he's asking you to do. He will comfort you, yes, as we said last week. He'll confront you as well.

So all of these applications, God is sufficient. So we can word last week's take-home truth, last week's presence principle a little more meaty, add some meat to it, and we could cover both these chapters and say something like this. God's presence not only calls us, it comforts and confronts us.

And it moves us from insecurity and inability to obedience and dependence. So again, this is a way to take these two chapters, especially chapter 4, and make sure we at least at first get a horizontal landing of it. Like, hey, what does it say to me today? This is a proper textual way.

Will you read this final presence principle with me together? God's presence not only calls us, it comforts and confronts us. Moving us from insecurity and inability to obedience and dependence. However, the primary power of this text is not in how it props us up.

While I think it does that without textual wreckage or contextual damage, I think it rightly does that in some ways. I think it's pastorally negligent for me to say to you, why don't you just try to be like Moses? Because Moses is not a type of Jordan. He's not a type of Dan.

Not a type of Jay. Moses is provided for us as a type of Christ. I think the deepest punch in this passage is how these verses point us to the all sufficiency of Christ for every task he calls us to.

And you're probably more like Moses in how you try to bargain with God than you are in how you obey God. I am. When I read this, I'm like, man, I got a long way to go.

I see all the problems in my life through Moses. And then I look at Christ and how he fulfills everything that Moses didn't do perfectly. Christ fulfills all of that completely, sufficiently, perfectly.

I thank God that Jesus Christ, once and for all, delivered me from my Egypt, from bondage to my sin, from the penalty and power of Satan, and delivered me to the kingdom of his dear son. That truth floods me, overwhelms me, and emboldens me to just simply obey God whatever he asks me to do. That's what I'm asking you to do.

Is to realize, and this is probably even a better presence principle, that to every protest you give God that's based in you, God in return gives you himself. And he's proven that when he gave Jesus Christ, the perfect son of God, who lived and died and was buried and rose again, met with his disciples and over 500 people for over 40 days, ascended. He and the Father sent the Spirit who empowered the church to be witnesses so that all nations would hear the gospel and come to Christ.

That's our task. So how God is calling you to that in specific ways, man, let's lean in. That can be individual, it can be personal.

You've got to wrestle that through, but no bargaining. No negotiating. You laughed at that earlier when you're the parent.

Let's try to keep God from laughing. Amen? If that's even a good thing to say, I don't know. Quit negotiating, quit bargaining.

You've got the Spirit of God in you, sent by the Son of God and the Father to empower you to do every single thing he asks of you. So do I. Let's start obeying, quit bargaining, quit negotiating. And when a church filled with God's Spirit beholds the beauty and magnificence of Christ who in every way mediated for us and redeemed us and delivered us and fills us and calls us.

There may be moments of fear. You may have excuses. You may have some doubts.

You may wonder a lot of questions. Don't stay there. Move towards obedience.

God is patient with you. But he's also committed to his purposes. He's so committed to his purposes that he promised us in John that those he holds, no one can pluck them out of his hand.

So go for it. Start obeying. God's got you.

He said in Jude that you would never stumble or falter, but he would bring you safely home by his grace. So keep walking. Stop bargaining.

Stop negotiating. Obedience is the call. Where should you obey? As I was pondering a lot of this, I was reminded of our visit to Niagara Falls in 2001.

Julian and I took our kids there. It was part of a longer trip. We visited New York.

By the way, don't ever visit New York with four children and a double stroller. Terrible idea. We got cussed at twice, once by some lady who said, you don't bring strollers into New York City, especially double ones.

You don't fit through the turnstiles at the subway. Sorry, I didn't know the rules. You know, that's what I'm thinking.

But we had kind of a good excursion as a family, and Brett was 11. Bethany was 9. Brianna was 5. I think Brooke was barely 3. I think I'm close on that. We're at Niagara Falls, or at the top of it.

You know, it's where I was standing to my left is where the falls were. It's a good ways away, but you could see it. You could hear it.

I remember standing there, Julie and our kids, and at the top there's like this, I call it a circulating pool. I don't know what the official name is, but the water's there, and there's several circles. You can tell it's moving.

You can tell I don't want to fall in that because I probably can't swim to the shore which means my only option is I'll gradually kind of be taken by one of these currents, and then that's next, the falls. So I'm kind of thinking about this because I'm standing next to these rails, and what's striking is if you've been there, it's just two metal bars. At least in 2001 it was.

The top one's about where my waist is, and then the second one's about my knees, and I'm thinking, I mean, any 5-year-old could just get right through. I could probably squeeze through these. I'm not a big guy.

I just squeeze right through here. I'm like, how is this protective? So I'm thinking all this, holding the bar, like, hmm, I don't want to get in there, and Julie says, could you grab two hands for our kids? Could you grab our kids by the hand? I'm thinking, I'm probably thinking the same thing. She said the same thing to me at the Grand Canyon as well, by the way.

So I'm like, hey, good idea. So I don't know whose two I grabbed. I just grabbed them.

Here's what she didn't ask in that moment. She didn't say, hey, kids, could you grab dad's hand? You know why? Because a father's hand is way stronger. His grip is way stronger than a child's.

That's Exodus 3 and 4. God didn't ask Moses, hey, hold my hand. God told Moses, I got your hand. His grip was way stronger than Moses'.

He had Moses right where he wanted him. He was going to guide him, provide for him, protect him, empower him. All he needed was obedience.

And the more Moses realized God's got my hand, I think the more he obeyed. A whole lot more than if he said, well, I think I got your hand. Can I say to you this morning, you've trusted in Jesus and you're a follower of the king.

God's got you. He's got your hand. You may think you're weak as grip.

Your ability's small. So what? He's got your hand. You may think your voice is timid.

Your influence, little. God's got your hand. All he wants you to do is obey the next thing he's told you to do.

So will you quit bargaining and quit negotiating and start obeying?