Scripture Daily

Context No. 1603 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 4:13-17: in context

13Moses said, “Oh, Lord, please send someone else.” 14The LORD’s anger burned against Moses, and he said, “What about Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Also, behold, he is coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. 15You shall speak to him, and put the words in his mouth. I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. 16He will be your spokesman to the people. It will happen that he will be to you a mouth, and you will be to him as God. 17You shall take this rod in your hand, with which you shall do the signs.”

God has called Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, and Moses has raised objection after objection: who am I, what if they don't believe me, I am not eloquent. Now, out of excuses, he simply pleads: please, Lord, send someone else. God's anger burns against him; but even in his anger he does not release Moses from the call. Instead he provides help: your brother Aaron can speak well; he is already coming to meet you; you will put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and his, and teach you what to do. Take the staff, and go.

Moses had run out of reasons and come to the bottom of his reluctance: send someone else. He felt inadequate to the call, unequal to it, and wanted simply to be let off. And God's response is instructive. He does not accept the refusal and find someone else; the call stands. But neither does he leave Moses to face it alone in his inadequacy. He provides what Moses lacks: a brother who can speak, and, more, his own presence, I will be with your mouth. God's answer to Moses' sense of inadequacy was not to release him from the task but to supply what he needed to do it. There is a pattern here for our own pleas of inadequacy. When God calls us to something and we feel unequal to it, our instinct, like Moses', is often to ask to be let off, to plead that someone else could do it better. And God's response is frequently not to release us but to provide, to supply the help we lack, to promise his own presence, to equip the called. The sense of inadequacy is often real; Moses really was not eloquent. But God does not call the equipped so much as equip the called. Where we feel our lack, God offers his provision and his presence: I will be with your mouth. The answer to inadequacy is not usually escape from the call but the God who supplies what we lack and goes with us into it. Moses wanted out; God gave him Aaron and his own presence, and sent him.

When God calls me to something I feel inadequate for, do I plead, like Moses, to be let off, asking him to send someone else, or can I trust that his answer is usually not to release me but to supply what I lack and to go with me, equipping the one he has called?

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