All right, brethren, if you will,
let's open to Exodus chapter four. Couldn't keep from thinking of
an Axel and Peter and John after they had healed that lame man
by the temple. Pharisees got mad and they said,
you stop preaching in that name. We don't want to hear that name
again. Quit it. And they went back and
forth. They got arrested a few times
in a few days. And they went back to their company, to that
remnant that was saved there, and gathered together in worship,
and they prayed together with one heart, and they praised the
Lord. They said, Lord, everything you've
done is right. It's your determinant counsel.
We're thankful for that. You're wonderful. And then they
praised, and then they had a petition. They asked for something, and
they said, Lord, give your servants boldness. The courage to do it,
to preach in this name, but simplicity. Just give them the ability to
preach this gospel to save your people. And the Lord did. He
filled them full of love. full of the Spirit. He does that,
has done that throughout time, he does it now and he shall until
that last saint is called on. And here in Exodus 4, the Lord's
gonna give Moses a message to preach. He says, back in chapter
three, verse 20, he said, I will stretch out my hand and smite
Egypt with all my wonders, which I will do in the midst thereof.
And after that, he will let you go. So you're going to go to
Pharaoh, tell him, let my people go. And the Lord said, I'm going
to stretch out my hand and smite this. And he said, verse 21,
and I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.
And it shall come to pass that when you go, you shall not go
empty, but every woman shall borrow of her neighbor and of
her that sojourn in her house, jewels of silver and jewels of
gold and raiment. And you shall put them upon your
sons and upon your daughters. And you shall spoil the Egyptians.
The Lord said, I'm going to send these taskmasters to you. You
forgot me and I've sent you taskmasters. It's hard. And you've cried out
to me and I've heard your cry and now I'm going to deliver
you. I'm going to bring you out. There's an exodus there and I'm
going to save my people. And they said, when you do come
out, there's gonna be a lot of plagues take place. This isn't
gonna be tomorrow morning, but when you do come out, those Egyptians
are gonna give you all their gold and silver so you can build
a tabernacle. and you can go in the wilderness
and you can worship Him, that's gonna happen. And all that is
done, it's finished. We have a holiday in America
called Juneteenth. And when the Civil War was over
on April 9th of 1865, the slaves were freed, but news didn't make
it to Kansas in the middle of the country there for several
weeks. It took time for physical word
to make it. They couldn't text someone. It
wasn't on the news. And so they celebrate Juneteenth
there. They celebrate something that
was already accomplished. And the Lord's telling Egypt,
or telling Israel in Egypt, this is what I'm gonna do. And so
you can celebrate, even though it hasn't come to pass yet, you
can go ahead and be happy about it. It will come to pass. We
say you can take it to the bank. It's as good as gold. It's done. How's he gonna do that? Well,
Moses is gonna preach. to Egypt, he's gonna preach to
Pharaoh, and the Lord will give him the message to preach. It
says in chapter four, verse one, and Moses answered and said,
but behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice,
for they will say the Lord hath not appeared unto thee. You're
gonna go tell those of Israel there in Egypt that the Lord
sent you and the Lord gave you a message. He said, but they're
not gonna believe me, and I'll say that the I Am sent me, but how
are they gonna believe me? And I thought, you know, out
of this rebellion and unbelief of Moses, this great prophet
the Lord's going to use. And he later on says, Lord, he
said, my mouth doesn't work right. And the Lord said, who made the
mouth? And Jonah was going to Tarshish and the Lord said, go
to Nineveh. And he said, well, I'll just
go to Tarshish. And regardless of the unbelief or regardless
of the rebellion of the servant, the Lord's unfazed in what he's
going to be There in verse one again, chapter
four, Moses' answer said, but behold, they will not believe
me nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say, the Lord has
not appeared unto thee. And the Lord said unto him, what
is in thy hand? And he said, a rod. The Lord
was not fazed by Moses being reluctant or Moses being lazy
or whatever word we could put to it. And the first point of
this, he's going to give him a message. He said, what's in
your hand, Moses? What's in your hand? The Lord's
gonna give Moses a three point message to preach. The first
thing we'll look at is the rod, verse three. And he said, cast
it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground
and it became a serpent. And Moses fled from before it.
Moses had this rod that Aaron's gonna carry. And the Lord said,
what's that? I have this rod here. He said,
throw it on the ground. This is the first point of your
message you're gonna preach. Throw that rod on the ground.
And it became a serpent. And Moses ran away. Now he'd
been tending sheep in the desert for a long time. If this was
some simple, I'm getting used to snakes. We live in California,
I hate snakes. But it's getting to where I'm
not, I don't just scream and run away for the hills anymore.
I'll fight them a little bit or I'll go kill them and then
I get rid of it. But I'm getting used to that. That's just been
a few years. Moses was raised in Egypt and he was on the backside
of that desert for 40 years. And so if this was just a simple
garter snake or some little non-poisonous snake, he wouldn't have been
too afraid, wouldn't have fled from it. That was danger here.
It was a dangerous snake, poisonous, deadly. He was no match for it
and he knew it. It says in verse four, and the
Lord said unto Moses, put forth thy hand and take it by the tail.
And he put forth his hand and caught it and it became a rod
in his hand. So he had this rod and he threw it down and it became
a poisonous snake, a deadly snake. And the Lord said, now take it
up again. But he didn't say grab it by the head. He didn't say
rub it down the length of it. You're no match for this thing.
You just, your understanding of this thing's not gonna be
too great. You just touch it by the tail. When you touched
it by the tail, it became a rod again. You can take it up in
your hand. What is this rod and what's happening
with it? What's this first point? Turn
over to Isaiah 11. Isaiah chapter 11. And there shall come forth a
rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of
his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of counsel and might, and the spirit of knowledge and
of the fear of the Lord. Wouldn't that be an amazing thing
to have the spirit and counsel of might upon us? have the spirit
of knowledge, have a spirit of wisdom, to have an understanding
of the Lord and to honor him. He said, if a man's gonna boast,
don't let him boast in the things that we typically boast in. You
let him boast in that he knows and understands me. And the fear
of the Lord. Verse three, and shall make of
him quick understanding in fear of the Lord. And he shall not
judge after the sight of his eyes. neither reprove after the
hearing of his ears." That's what I do. I see things and I
say, well, that's not good. Or you hear something, you say,
oh, I think that's good or that's bad. That's what man does. But
with the righteousness shall he judge the poor and reprove
with equity the meek of the earth. And he shall smite the earth
with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips shall
he slay the wicked. What's this rod of Jesse? That's
Christ the rod. That's him. And this is what
the Lord's teaching Moses. He said, you take that rod, that's
Christ. And this is showing him coming down, descending to the
ground, to this cursed earth. And he does that for his people.
And he was made under the law and he was made sin. He was made
the very thing that was killing us like that serpent high and
lifted in the wilderness. He was made that, and he was received
up as that rod of Jesse, according to the scriptures. When that
was accomplished, he was right back where he started at, right
back on his rightful throne. Moses, go preach that. Go preach
that brazen serpent, lifted up, drawing all his church, all of
his bride to himself. Now Moses saw this physical snake
when he threw that rod down, it became a serpent, and he fled
from it. He ran away from it, he didn't
want to mess with it. We read about this in 2 Corinthians
5, and it says, now we are the ambassadors for Christ, as though
God did beseech you by us, or preach you to him, and we pray
you, and Christ said, be ye reconciled to God. Those that are at war,
those that are at enmity in their minds, through wicked works,
and want nothing to do with the Lord, not the God of our imagination,
but the God of scripture, the God that is God. I said, be reconciled
to him, be reconciled. How could that happen? For he
hath made him, made Christ, sin for us who knew no sin, that
we may be made the righteousness of God in him. When we touch
the tail of that, doesn't that make you recoil a little bit?
Are those things too deep? Like I said before, pass off
of that glass dimly. What really took place? I don't know. If somebody came
with a thorough explanation of detail by detail of what took
place in that tomb for three days, I'd be leery of it. Those things are reserved for
the Lord, aren't they? He let us know what happened before
and after. It makes me draw back a little
bit, but substitution is what this is showing us. And that's
a marvelous thing. It's a precious thing. And it's
a terrible thing. If we know what we are, if we
know the weight of that responsibility, Cameron was teaching a class
of little, little people, young folks. And just as the Lord said,
they're disobedient to parents. and unruly and they're hard to
do it and it's getting worse generation by generation like
every year it seems to be and she had a hard time with that
well she had one one of the other teachers she had to be gone to
take a test one day and bob came in and substituted for her he
took over that class for that day he was just there for the
day and he got through and he told karen said i don't see how
you live with these children The punishment of what I am rested
solely on my shoulders. I earned that. That's the wage
of sin that I earned. That judgment that comes with
it. The soul that sins shall surely die. And because Christ
came to this earth and was made the feminine man, his bride,
and was made me, and he was made you that he died for. And that
payment was made. That judgment was completed.
And how do we know? The tomb's empty. The propitiation's
been made, that sacrifice. He provided himself a lamb, and
the sacrifice has been accepted. But what are we gonna do now?
Thinking. We don't need to work, we don't
need to wash. We want to. We wanna do those things, we
want to spread the gospel. But the work's done, it's finished. It's completed. Go preach that
to them, Moses. And you go to Israel, go tell
them what they are and what Christ did, what he's done, what he's
accomplished and where he is now and what he's doing. Now
back in our text there in Exodus 4. The Lord had Moses preach that rod.
And it gave him something else too, verse 4. And the Lord said
unto Moses, put forth thy hand and take it by the tail. And
he put forth his hand and caught it, and it became a rod again
in his hand, that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, hath
appeared unto them. That's that first point he gave
him to preach. Substitution crossed our head, taken our place, and
he's victorious. Behold your God. Behold him. We just sang that too. Bow down
before him, and every man, woman, and child ought to. ought to,
the king, he's worthy of it. Every knee will bow, every tongue
will confess, that's gonna happen. But for his people, love and
adore him. Love, just be in awe of what
he's done. Here's the second point that
he gives Moses in this three-point message. Why did that have to
happen? We have a savior. We're saved
from something. If I was in that ocean and I
had someone came and rescued me from drowning, a necessity
of that is that I would be drowning. I would have to be in the ocean.
If I was in a nice warm cabin in a big boat, I can't be saved
from drowning. There's nothing to be saved from.
Why did that rod of Jesse have to come to this earth and bear
our grief and our guilt and be risen again on his throne? Here's
the second point. All flesh is grass. Exodus four,
verse six. And the Lord said furthermore
unto him, put now thy hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand
in his bosom. And when he took it out, behold,
his hand was leprous as snow. And he said, put thy hand in
thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again and
plucked it out of his bosom. And behold, it was turned again
as his other flesh. And it shall come to pass that
they will not believe thee, neither hearken to thy voice of the first
sign, but they shall believe the voice of the latter sign.
The Lord said, you go preach to them this rod coming down. He made a serpent and going up
again. And if they won't hear that, because there's no necessity,
There's a savior. We need to be saved from something.
He said, call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people
from something, from their sins. He said, go preach that. All
flesh is grass. He said, you go down there and
you take your hand and you put it on your heart. Right where
the problem is. Not the problem in the thoughts
or the problems in the deeds and the acts or the source of
this. You go touch your heart. And when you pull it out, you
say, I'm a leper. I know you're a sinner and you need a savior
because I'm a sinner and you ain't no different than me. I
need a savior. You go preach that to him. And
I said, he put it back on your heart and said, he's made me
whole. He's made me whole. There are Mark, Matthew 15. Look
over there if you like. Matthew 15. Lord told Moses, if you touch
your bosom, what the problem is, and show the people. Matthew
15 verse 16. And Jesus said, are you also
yet without understanding? Do you not yet understand that
whatsoever entereth at the mouth, goeth into the bell and is cast
into the draw? But those things which proceed out For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies. These are the things which defile
a man. It's not eating with unwashed hands. It's not what you eat.
You can have all the poor pork sandwiches you want to eat. It's
fine. It's what comes out of the mouth, because that's what
comes out of the heart, which defiles a man. But to eat with
unwashed hands defiles not a man. I've seen people get really upset
over that. Like a person doesn't steal and
become a thief. You're a thief. And then you
happen to steal. It comes into practice. Wow,
the heart's corrupt. We don't wash up this old heart.
The Lord doesn't just make it better and repair it. And if
he did that, there'd be scars and there'd be evidence of the
old thing. He makes a new creation inside of his people. That great
theological philosopher came to him by night, Nicodemus. And
the Lord said, you must be born again. And he said, how could
this be? I entered my mother's womb a
second time. No, Nicodemus. No, it's a hard work. Just like
the wind comes and goes, if you can't tell where it's going,
you can't tell where it's coming, you can't stop it, you can't start it.
He said, that's my spirit. He said, my work is I see fit.
That's unlike anything Nicodemus had ever heard in his life. He
said, I'm gonna put a new heart in it. Cause you need a new heart.
No heart's not worth anything. Lord said, gave that example
of the public and and the Pharisee praying in the temple. And he
said, that publican stood far off and wouldn't even lift up
his eyes on the heaven. And he smote upon his breast,
saying, Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner. He didn't smote
on his head, he didn't smote on his feet, and he didn't clap
his hands. He smote on the heart where the problem was. That's
the problem. We're lepers. And that's what
Moses was saying. He said, I'm the leper. I'm sin
sick, just like you are. And the Lord makes you whole
because of Christ. Because of Christ. He said, you tell them
what you are, Moses. I've heard people say that before,
too. A friend of mine was preaching. Afterwards, somebody came up
to me and said, it's so refreshing to hear a preacher say that they're
a sinner. That's such a rare thing. Normally they say that
I'm good, you're bad. You need to be like me. There's a brother,
Paul May, and he stood up and said, I'm just like you. There's
no difference. We come from the same father
of Adam. That's a fact. But because of
that rod being made sin and being risen, we're made whole. Not
of us, but of him. Mark 5 says, Jesus suffered him
not, but saith, go home to thy friends and tell them what great
things the Lord hath done for thee and had compassion on thee.
Go tell them, Moses, what I've done for you. Just like Nebuchadnezzar,
he says, I'm going to tell you I'm just telling you what you
know. You witness to what you've seen. You witness. That first point,
substitution. Christ came and was made sin
for us and he's risen. He's on his throne. That second
point, salvation, that substitution is needed. It's needed. We're
the problem. We're the problem. And here's
the third point. How can that be? How can that
be legal? How can that be right? How could
we be bought? be redeemed with a price and
made holy forever. The Lord has to have the holy
things in his presence. It's not just something that,
we buy a vehicle, you get a brand new car and it runs great, there's
a warranty on it. Give it 60 years. It's gonna
fail. Something's gonna break. That's
just, that's its nature, it's part of it, it's a fact. And
just like us, if the Lord just cleaned us up and he just purchased
us and now we're on our own, We can't be in his sight, we
have the capacity to sin. We still do. Look here back at
Exodus four verse nine. This is a good question. How
can a man be just with God? How can this be so? How could
he be just and to justify? Exodus four verse nine. And it
shall come to pass that they will not believe also these two
signs. You go tell them about the rod and you go show them
your hand. Show them what you are of the heart. Neither hearken
unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river
and pour it on the dry land. And the water which thou takest
out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. There's water and there's blood.
And that lands on us, the dry land. Because you show them this. You show them, what's the blood?
Well, without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of
sins. We have to be bought with a price. That's what happened
with Adonais and Sapphira. They professed to be Christians
with the mouth, but to say so, that's to declare, that comes
with that name. We're given the last name, the surname of the
Lord our righteousness. The price of that name is the
blood of Christ. God shed his own blood to purchase
his people. That's a very valuable name that
he gives us. And we're, That blood's without
measure, the value of it. But then we're also washed with
the water. That's what the hymn writer wrote. Water in the blood
from his wounded side which will be of sin the double cure, save
from wrath and make me pure. You bought me with your blood,
cleansed me with it, and you washed me in the water. You made
us holy. You set us apart for your use, Lord. You made a new
creation with your workmanship. You've made us this way. And
not only were your possession were made holy without blame
before him in love. That's unbelievable. He said,
go preach a man. Tell him what Christ done. Tell
him what we are and say, this is perfectly legal and it's right.
And it's just to do so because Christ hanging on that cross
purchased you and he washed you. You're made clean. It says over
in Exodus 12, and the blood shall be to you for a token, remember
that Passover came, upon the houses where you are. And when
I see the blood, I'll pass over you. And the plague should not
be on you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. What a thought. I've never died. And so there's
the fear of the unknown. The method of dying, I hope as
for you all, it's quick and inner sleep and painless and all those
things. But to come to our end, the method
of which that'll take place is nerve wracking because we've
never experienced it. But for that judgment after, there's
no fear. There's no, right now there's
no condemnations, what Paul told us. Those that Christ has died
for, there's none. And so why would we fear to go
to sleep and wake up in the morning? The judgment's been accomplished.
The Lord sees the blood that He's provided and He's applied.
And when He sees that blood, He said, I'll pass over you.
There's no plagues gonna destroy you. You're fine. You're fine.
You're my possession. You're mine. That water and that
blood. That's what John told us about
in 1 John 5. He said, this is He that came
by water and blood. Christ Jesus. Not by water only. but by water and blood, and the
spirit that beareth witness, because the spirit is true. Go preach that to them, Moses.
Go tell them all the work's been accomplished. Everything that's
required of you has been fulfilled, and there was a lot required.
You can't be in the Lord's sight. And this work has been accomplished
and this is right. And he is just and the justifier. We can't do that through substitution.
If one of my children were to be arrested and be in prison,
I can't go down and say, judge, let me sit in the prison cell
and let them go free. And if that were possible, if
I could physically do that, I still didn't commit the crime. I wasn't
the guilty party. Christ coming down has bore our
guilt and bore our shame in his body on the tree, made a curse
for us. And from that wounded side, that
blood and that water which comes forth, it's finished. It's finished. Preach that to him, Moses. Go
tell him. What if I don't hear that first
point? He said, preach him the second point. What if I don't
hear the second point? He said, go tell him about the water and
the blood. What then, if they don't rejoice
and the frowns aren't turned upside down and they don't say,
this is fabulous. I'm thankful. They don't praise the Lord. Angus
may read here in a minute, but I already had this wrote down
first, so I get to read it to him. There in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul
was telling the church at Corinth how to conduct the Lord's table.
He said, after this manner, he took the cup and when he had
supped, he said, this cup is the New Testament in my blood.
This do you as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me. This
isn't a sacrament, grace isn't conferred because we drank a
cup or anything like that. He said, you're just remembering
and you're declaring what I have already done. You're remembering
me, you're remembering the person. For as often as you eat the bread
and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death care till he
come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this
cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the blood and the
body of the Lord. What if they do? That's terrifying. Angus understands this, and you
do too, because you spoke with your family and your friends
and your loved ones about the Lord and they don't want to hear
it. And you know the end of that. And it's terrifying. It's weighty. It's a weighty matter. And to
preach to people, to declare Christ and Him crucified, and
for them not to care, just to be a hard ground when that seed's
broadcast, it just bounces off the forehead. And it's a heartbreaking
thing. And that's a sad thing. It's
so easy to focus on the negative because there's a whole lot of
negative, ain't there? But what if they do? What if
you preach to them and they're giving ears to hear that rod
coming down and being exalted again, and they're giving ears
to hear this. I'm a leper too. I'm sick in the heart. And the
Lord gives new hearts. And is this temporary? No, it's
everlasting. This love's for everlasting.
We're bought and we're washed and can never sin again because
we're in him. What happens if we hear that? Look here, verse
41, Exodus 4, 41. And the people believed. And
when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel
and that he'd looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their
heads and they worshiped. Just like Nebuchadnezzar. He'd
saw those things. The Lord revealed himself to
him and revealed what he was and what did he do at the end. old brother Henry told us growing
up, he was my pastor. He said, when you're young, you
have a whole lot of questions and you have a lot of things
you think you need in this world. And when you pray to the Lord,
you ask for a lot of things. You have a lot of petitions.
And then as time goes on and you mature and we grow in grace
and life changes and the Lord reveals Christ more to you and
you learn more of what Isaiah saw, more of what Ezekiel saw,
more of what Jeremiah was shown and the Lord reveals himself
to you. Those petitions turn into praise. You've done that,
ain't you? You go to ask the Lord for something.
You say, Lord, nevermind, thank you. Thank you. things are precious. I pray the
Lord makes you find that message that He gives precious. I do.
Thank you for having us. As always, it's a pleasure and
I appreciate your warmness and rejoice with you. Hopefully y'all
come visit us too. You're welcome anytime. So you
come to California and you got a vehicle to drive and a house
to stay in and we'll keep you fed too. Kim will make some authentic
biscuits and gravy for you. We'll teach you what that means.