I HAVE HEARD – WEEK 3
When God Sends the Unqualified
May 4, 2025
EXODUS 6:28-7:7 – On the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, 29 the Lord said to Moses, “I am the Lord; tell Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you.” 30 But Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?”
7 And the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. 2 You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, 4 Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. 5 The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” 6 Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them. 7 Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
Organized by three body parts:
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- Moses’s lips
- Pharaoh’s heart
- God’s hand
MOSES’S LIPS
EXODUS 6:28-7:7 – On the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, 29 the Lord said to Moses, “I am the Lord; tell Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you.” 30 But Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?”
EXODUS 4:11-12 – Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
EXODUS 7:1-2 – …“See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. 2 You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land.
“In Egyptian royal ideology, the pharaoh was considered to be a divine being. So by calling Moses God, Yahweh is beating Pharaoh at his own game.”
Peter Enns
EXODUS 7:1 – …and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.
EXODUS 4:15-16 – “You shall speak to him [Aaron] and put the words in his mouth… 16 He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him.”
2 CORINTHIANS 5:20 – Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.
“Every believer in Christ holds an office in the Church—the office of witnessing for Christ, and it is the highest, most honorable, most useful office in the world.”
Marcus Brownson
EXODUS 7:6-7 – Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them. 7 Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
“Moses spent forty years in Pharaoh’s court thinking he was somebody, forty years in the desert learning he was nobody, and forty years showing what God can do with a somebody who found out he was a nobody.”
D.L. Moody
PHARAOH’S HARD HEART
EXODUS 7:3-4a – But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, 4 Pharaoh will not listen to you…
EXODUS 5:2 – “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”
EXODUS 7:2 – “You shall speak all that I command you.”
“We are bidden to preach, but we are not bidden to justify people and make them pious… The Word is entrusted to him; this is God’s will, and this Word he is to proclaim even though no one may want to listen to him.”
Martin Luther
“The focus of my resentment was God himself, the one who had called me to this. I had given everything – all my time, all my education, years of ministry and true Christian devotion – and now I was failing.”
Kent Hughes
1 CORINTHIANS 4:2 – Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.
ISAIAH 6:10 – Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see…and be healed.”
ROMANS 9:18 – So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
ROMANS 9:17 – “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
GOD’S MIGHTY HAND
EXODUS 7:4b-5 – Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. 5 The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.”
God’s hand would accomplish two things at once:
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- Deliverance for His people
- Judgment for their oppressors.
EXODUS 7:5 – The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord…
EXODUS 9:20 – Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses.
PHILIPPIANS 2:10-11 – so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.