TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Date: October 9, 2026. Lesson 200-2026. Exodus 4:1-5. What Is in Your Hand?

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

In this Faith Friday edition of Morning Manna, Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart examine Exodus 4:1–5 and God’s simple question to Moses: “What is that in thine hand?” Moses saw an ordinary shepherd’s rod, but God saw an instrument He could use. The rod represented forty years Moses may have considered wasted, yet when surrendered to God, it became “the rod of God.” This lesson reminds us that God’s calling may not be waiting for something we lack. The question may be what He has already placed in our hands, and whether we are willing to surrender it for His purposes. Lesson 200-2026 Teachers: Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart You can partner with us by visiting MannaNation.com, calling 1-888-519-4935, or by mail at PO Box 399 Vero Beach, FL 32961 MEGA FIRE reveals the ancient recurring cycles of war and economic collapse that have shaped history for 600 years. These patterns predict America is now entering its most dangerous period since World War II. Get your copy today! www.megafire.world Get high-quality emergency preparedness food today from American Reserves! www.AmericanReserves.com It’s the Final Day! The day Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. Now available in eBook and audio formats! Order Final Day from Amazon today! www.Amazon.com/Final-Day Apple users, you can download the audio version on Apple Books! www.books.apple.com/final-day Purchase the 4-part DVD set or start streaming Sacrificing Liberty today. www.Sacrificingliberty.com

Welcome to Morning Manor. Welcome to Morning Manor. Your teachers, Rackwiles and Dr. Burkla. Get your Bible and notebook and get ready to here before. Good morning. This is Morning Manna, and today is Faith Friday. That means two things. Firstly, our lesson topic is faith.

And secondly, we will begin our lesson with the Lord's supper. So you are invited to join with thousands of saints worldwide in a virtual Holy Communion meal. So please have bread and your choice of drink juice or red wine available for this service that's going to begin in just a few minutes. All born again baptized believers in Jesus Christ are welcome to participate. We ask that you approach the Lord's table with reverence for this sacred meal, believing that we are feasting by faith on the flesh and blood of our crucified Savior Jesus Christ. We always start our communion service with the Lord's prayer. So please say aloud the Lord's prayer and realize that there are thousands of saints all over the world saying the Lord's

prayer with you this very moment. I think this is awesome. This is awesome. A worldwide communion service and a worldwide prayer, the Lord's prayer, together. Let's pray. Our Father, Richard in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our deaths as we forgive our debtors. and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen. Amen. Let's enter into the Lord's service at this time.

Let's open with prayer. Almighty God, in your tender mercy you gave your only begotten Son Jesus Christ and suffered death upon the cross for our redemption. He offered himself and made once for all time a perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. He instituted this remembrance of his passion, that's what you commanded us to continue until he comes again.

Father, we ask you to bless and sanctify with your Word and Holy Spirit these gifts of bread and wine that we may partake of his most blessed body and blood. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed once for all upon the cross. Therefore, let us keep the feast.

Hallelujah. On the night that he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. Then he gave it to his disciples, saying, take eat. This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, preserve your body and soul to everlasting life. This is the bread of heaven. Take and eat in remembrance that Christ's blood, Christ died for you.

After supper, Jesus took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them saying, drink this all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ was who shed for you, preserve your body and soul to everlasting life. Drink the cup of salvation and remembrance, and Christ's blood was shed for you and be thankful. behold the Lamb of God,

behold Him who takes away the sins of the world, and blessed are those who are invited to the Married Supper of the Lamb. This sacrament is the gift of God for the people of God. Feed on Him by faith with Thanksgiving that Christ died for you. Rick. Heavenly Father, we thank you

for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of Jesus Christ, your son, and our Savior. And for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the body of Christ and heirs of your eternal kingdom. And now, Father, to you, to Christ our Lord and to the Holy Spirit, the honor and glory, now and forever. Amen. Amen. Well, praise the Lord. Welcome morning, man, everyone. We're so glad to have you here with us today as we study the Word of God together. Fridays are Faith Friday, and we're going to continue in that today by looking at a passage.

It found in Exodus chapter 4 verses 1 through 5. Today's Faith Friday lesson is entitled, What is in Your Hand? And so consider the scene here. Once again, this is Exodus chapter 4, verse 1 through 5. Moses, he's 80 years old. He's standing barefoot in front of a bush. that burns without being consumed. God has just given him the assignment of his life,

go to Pharaoh and bring Israel out of Egypt. What's the first thing Moses started to do, Rick? Moses has been objecting. Exodus 3 and 4 records a series of them. Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh in Exodus 311? That's an objection about his inadequacy. what shall I say into them when they ask your name, Exodus 313, an objection about his authority? Now, chapter 4, verse 1, the 3rd, behold, they will not believe me.

So we have three objections here, Rick. An objection about his credibility is this one. Now notice every one of these is a reasonable concern. Moses is not being faithful, faithless in the ordinary. sense. He is identifying genuine problems with a genuinely impossible assignment. And God, this is fascinating here today as we get into this study. God does not answer the third objection. God asks a question and response. What is in thine hand? And today what we're going to do is going to examine why God answered that objection with a question,

what Moses was actually holding, what happened to it when he let it go? Rick starts our study today here, after I read the passage, Exodus chapter 4, verses 1 through 5, and Moses answered and said, but behold, they will not believe me nor hearken to my voice, for they will say, the Lord hath not appeared unto thee.

And the Lord said in him, what is in thine hand? And he set a rod. And he said, cast it on the ground, and he cast it on the ground, and he cast it on the ground, and became a serpent, and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said under Moses,

put forth thine hand, take it by the tail, and he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his sin. That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,

and the God of Jacob, ath appeared unto thee. And then later on in that same chapter, Exodus 4, verse 20, Moses took his wife and sons, set them upon an ass and returned to the land of Egypt, and Moses took the rod of God in his hand, the rod of God. Rick starts us off today by asking that question, what is in thine hand? Well, Doc, anybody out there today who is thinking, That stuff happened thousands of years ago.

I believe it happened. It happened thousands of years ago. What does it have to do with me? How does this affect my life? I'm here to tell you that you will discover when the Lord gives you an assignment, he's going to ask you the same question, what's in your hand? Because God will give you an assignment that you can't do in your own strength. he'll give you something.

How do you know something? An assignment is from the Lord. One way is it's so big that you can't do it. Amen. That's one of the qualifications. The assignment is bigger than you. It's beyond your skills, your competency, your training, your education, your ability. He gives that to you so everybody knows you didn't do it.

He did it through you. God will ask you the same question that he asked Moses, what's in your hand. So we're going to focus on this question that God asked Moses, what is that in thine hand? Moses has just raised a serious strategic objection, and God responds by asking him about the object he is holding. Now, it sounds like a change. of subject, but it's not.

This is not like the Lord's looking around and just, you know, he's listening to Moses and then he looks down and hey, by the way, Moses, what is that thing in your hand? I don't recognize it. That's not what's going on here. There are three things that we should notice

about the question. Firstly, God obviously knew what was in Moses' hand. He's not gathering information. It's not the first rod he's ever seen, the first staff. The question is for Moses, and its purpose is to make him look at something he had stopped seeing. Keep that somewhere in your mind. The purpose of asking

Moses, what was in his hand, was to make him look at something that Moses had stopped seeing. It was familiar. He was something he had for a long time. He was used to it. He wasn't even paying attention to it. It was kind of like your car keys. You're just so used to having a set of keys. You don't really think about. Today would be our smartphones. Everybody has a smartphone. The second reason, the question directed Moses's attention away from what he lacked and toward what he had, what he possessed. Every one of Moses's objections had been about an absence. He said, I lack standing. I lack a name to give. I lack credibility. I lack, I lack, I lack.

So God ask him about a presence. What is in your hand? Thirdly, the question is a pattern that we see throughout Scripture. God frequently answers a human's protest of inadequacy by asking what resources are already present. Jesus asked it twice when the disciples reported that the crowd could not be fed. Jesus said, how many loans have you? Go and see. And again, at defeating of 4,000, Elijah asked the widow, who was drowning in debt, what hast thou in thy house? And she says, nothing. Save a pot of oil.

In every case, the person has been itemizing what they do not have. And God directs them to inventory what they do have. Amen. You hit on something there, Rick. That's a great principle. If you will get this in your spirit today, get this in your heart, your mind and soul, this will change your life. All of us tend to say to God,

I would do that for you, but I don't have anything. I would like to take on that project, but I don't have the resources. And God will say, what's in your hand? What's in your house? What's in your business? What's in your bank account? Let's talk about what you have. Don't talk to me about what you don't have.

Let's talk about what you do have. See, you're little put next to a great God. becomes unlimited. Your tiny little, teeny, weenie, little, whatever it is, plays beside the great Almighty God becomes an unlimited resource. In every case where God asks a human, what do you got?

The answer sounds embarrassingly insignificant. A rod. Five loaves. a couple of fish, pot of oil. It's all through the Bible. I just have those little things. It's not enough. God says, no, it's more than enough.

You watch what happened. You just watch what happens when I touch that little stuff you have. Matthew Henry observed that God rarely begins with what man or woman wishes he or she had. And that the instrument of deliverance is nearly always something already in the house, already in the business, already in the church, already in your possession, that nobody

considered worth mentioning. God finds the insignificant thing. what's that what's that thing over there in the corner what's that thing in the closet he finds the insignificant

thing and he makes it significant and that's the lesson that we're learning today about faith doc right and the theological significance here

of God's question to Moses rests on an important point about how he equips people and really it runs counter to a common assumption. You know, Rick, most people, the assumption is that calling requires new equipment or new something, right? That if God assigns something beyond a person's capacity, he'll supply the tools that the person lacks. He sometimes does, but Exodus 4 here shows

the more common pattern. And I think you've observed it in your life. I know I have in mind. God takes what is already in your hand and changes what it can do. That's significant there because God changed what the rod did. Nothing new was given to Moses at the bush. He didn't say, well, I'll go out and get a brand new rod. I won't use his old rod.

No. He walked up that mountain with that stick. He walked back down the mountain with that safe stick. And later on, that stick, What did they call it? The rod of God. It changed his name, too. So what changed was whose purposes it served. It was Moses' stick going up.

It was God stick coming down. So the Apostle Paul states that the principle in 2nd Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7, is the very same principle here. And there he says, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. And that Greek word there is Osterconois. It means baked clay, the earthen vessels, cheap, common, breakable party, throw away pottery. Paul's point is not that God tolerates into your containers.

That's not what we're saying here. It's the ordinaries of the container. it's the proof of where the power really came from. You can't say the power came from the pot. And in 1st Corinthians 127, it has that same design. It says, God hath chosen what, the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And so throughout this series, we've encountered this design repeatedly.

You had Jericho's walls were brought down by, walking and shouting. Gideon's army reduced from thousands to 300. A general's healing routed through a captive girl. And so most people waiting to be useful to God are waiting for equipment. I need something, God. You know, everything Moses said to God was from his lack. I lack this.

I lack this. I need, in other words, he's saying, I lack something, I need something. God says, you've got something already. They're waiting for a credential, Rick. They're waiting for a platform. That's the phrase nowadays. They're waiting for a gift they haven't received. A season with more margin, a competence that they believe the work requires.

God's question at the burning books suggest a different starting point. Not what do you lack, but what do you, have in your hand right now. What can you use right now? And I think it's a question that God is really asking all of us, Rick. Doc, God asks Moses. And by the way, Doug, over the years that you've worked with me, there have been times when I've been stirred, motivated by the Holy Spirit,

to take on a new project, and we didn't have the resources. And many times, Doc, you would say to me, Rick, what's in your hand? Yep. What do we have? That's right. And that would refocus my thinking. Like, what do I have here? We can do this work. What do we have that we can launch this new project? And what do we usually found?

We found that we actually had something in our hand, didn't we? We did. that we weren't utilizing or not seeing the value. And that goes to where I'm taking this right now. So God asks Moses, what's in your hand? And Moses replies, a rod.

He didn't say a rod. I think he just said, it's just a stick. The voice of God's like, what is in your hand? And Moses says, God, it was insignificant. It's just a stick in his hand. Moses did not think it was worth discussing.

That's why he had a two-word answer, Rod. He didn't say, this is the greatest rod I've ever had. This is the, I've had this stick for 40 years. This is the most fantastic, awesome stick. He just said, A stick. And you know, you think about it, he probably did have it 40 years, Rick. I mean, he's been out there in the desert that long.

That's the point of making, Doc. It had grown familiar with him. He grew familiar with it. He didn't place any great importance on it. It was a stick. And it was the least remarkable object in his possession. And in that conversation, which included a bush on fire and the voice of God coming out of the burning bush. And the voice in the burning bush wants to talk about a stick.

I'm trying to get the picture what this was like for Moses. There's a voice coming out of a burning bush. And Moses is looking at the stick and he's saying, going, you want to talk about stick? Don't you want to tell me how you made the universe? Don't you want to tell me the secrets of creation? You want to talk about stick? Yes, the Lord wanted to talk about stick.

Consider what that stick actually represented in the hands of Moses. It was 40 years, of his life. Moses had been a shepherd in Midian for four decades. That staff, that stick, that rod, was his work tool, his daily companion, the implement of his trade. It's what he picked up every morning when he walked outside of his tent. And what he used to defend himself from wild animals, you know, maybe robbers and stuff that would try to take the sheep. That's right.

That stick had been around in it. He used it in many ways, right? But it was just a stick to him, a valuable stick, but insignificant, something that, when I say valuable, a useful stick. But a stick. Doug, it also represented Moses's demotion. Why? Because 40 years earlier, he was living in Pharaoh's palace. According to Acts 7, he learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds.

He had wielded in his hand Egyptian authority. but after he killed an Egyptian, he fled to the wilderness and he spent 40 years tending to sheep. Now, I remembered Moses. That was the criminal from 40 years ago. He's out there in the wilderness

with a stick and sheep. So, subconsciously when he looked at that rod, he thought about his demotion. Before I had, had to stick, I was somebody. I had a party. I had relevance. I had presence in Pharaoh's government. And now he's carried a herdsman stick in the desert to a man who had once held a position in the greatest government on earth. At that time, the staff was the measure of how far he had Poland.

So it represented his demotion. And it was his failure. Moses was in Midian because he had killed a man, had been discovered and fled. The 40 years of shepherding in the wilderness were the consequences of a catastrophic mistake. So when God asked Moses, what's that in your hand?

The honest answer was not merely raw, a stick. What he was really saying is, it's the evidence of everything that went wrong in my life and the tool of the small life I settled for afterward. That was the object that God asked for. The everyday tool that he used after he was expelled, after he fled from his high position in Egypt. It represented his failure, his demotion,

and his mundane everyday life of taking care of sheep. And God says, what is that? The staff was the one thing Moses had left from his years of obscurity. And that God selecting it for the great work was itself a sermon to the man who was holding it. To Moses, this is a stick, my tool of everyday life, but it represents my failure 40 years ago.

It represents my demotion from authority and prestige. And now this voice in a burning bush is asking me, what is it you're holding at your hand? What a strange question Moses most have thought God was asking you. And the theological weight there, Rick, The object, the staff, the rod deserves some further development because what God does with it reframes what, from Moses' perspective, may have been 40 apparently wasted years.

Moses almost certainly regarded Midian as a detour. 40 years of shepherding another man's flock in a desert after a promising beginning and a violent failure sure doesn't look like preparation. And yet the skills of those 40 years, Rick, are precisely the skills that the assignment moving forward required. He learned the wilderness. Now, think about this.

He had just spent 40 years in the wilderness, and Moses would spend the next 40 years leading 2 million people through terrain. He'd spent 40 previous years crossing. The second thing, he learned to lead animals that could not be reasoned with, which is not an unrelated qualification. We're leading a whole bunch of hard-headed

people known as Israel through the wilderness. And then, what else did he learn? He learned patience, which a man of 40 who killed an Egyptian in a moment of outrage plainly did not possess. And so the scriptures draw this connection elsewhere too. In Psalm 78, starting at verse 70, it describes God taking David from following to use, great with young, and setting him over Israel. So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.

And so what God's saying in Psalm 78 is that because David learned to take care of little lambs in the, in the wilderness. He had the ability to lead his people. The shepherd's hands became the king's hands, and the Psalm presents the sequence as deliberate. Now, a pastoral qualification is necessary here, and should be stated honestly. Scripture does not teach that every hard season is secretly strategic.

Okay. Sometimes people go through hard things because, you know, they choose it. John Waywin said, Life is hard, is harder when you're stupid. Don't do stupid things. Telling a suffering person that God is preparing them can be cruel when it's being offered as a formula.

Job's friends met exactly that same move, and God rebuked them, of course. And so what Exodus Chapter 4 does here establishes something a bit narrower and sufficient. What we can learn from this is God is not limited by what a person's past looks like. And he has repeatedly used what a man considered the evidence of his failure as the instrument of his use force.

Moses would carry that staff for the rest of his life. It would divide the Red Sea. It would strike the rock at Horeham and bring water. It would be held a lot at the Battle of Refudum while Israel prevailed. And Exodus Chapter 420 gives it a new name. and I hope you caught this when we introduced the scripture. But Moses finally sets out for Egypt, the text says,

Moses took the rod of God in his hand. Same stick, same stick, Rick, but a new title. It did not become the rod of God because it changed. It became the rod of God because it was surrendered to God. Amen? Amen. That's the key. It was surrendered to God. It was consecrated under God. And God asked Moses, what did he got in your hand? He says, a rod.

And then God makes it his rod. See, there's the key. What do you have in your hand that you can consecrate to God? and then God says that's mine. I'm going to change it. I'm not going to change the thing, but I'm going to empower it. I'm going to put my anointing on it. What is it that you have, that you can get to God for His glory, for his kingdom, for the exaltation of his son, for the expansion of his kingdom? What do you have in your hand that you could offer to God?

And the Lord said, cast it on the ground. Take that stick and throw it on the ground. Before the staff became anything, it had to leave his hand. Here's another principle. You've got to let go of it. See, Moses had been clutching that stick for 40 years. His fingerprints were in it. He had his own building grip where he had gripped that stick for 40 years.

And God says, throw it on the ground. Moses had to let go of it. If you're going to consecrate your little thing, whatever it is that you have, your little insignificant thing, and God says, what do you got there? If you're going to have it consecrated by God, to be used by God, you've got to let go of it. It's no longer yours, becomes the Lord's. That's difficult for a lot of people. So the surrender of the possession comes first.

The Hebrew word here means throw it. Throw it down. Throw it to the earth. He didn't say set it down gently on the ground. He said, cast it. The cast it means throw it. Didn't say toss it. Didn't say gently lay it down.

Didn't say prop it up against a tree. He said, throw it. Throw it. Throw it on the ground. And Moses obeyed. And he cast it on the ground. And it became a serpent. And Moses fled from him. And Doc, I can see that sea. I see. Moses jumping back. Whoa. Oh, snake. He probably jumped three feet near. I mean, it would have shocked anybody. which means the serpent was not a token gesture. Whatever appeared on the ground was genuinely frightening. Right, and I thought about this a little bit too, Rick. You had to know that Moses encountered snakes and stuff out in the desert. So there was something unique about this snake, wasn't there?

I'm assuming at that in those age and there were panthers, bears, right, snakes, but there's something different about this snake. It was enough to make him run. Yeah, it scared him. He jumped and ran. You know he shouted. And the Lord probably kept back a little giggle.

Run, Moses. And then he's going to get you, boy. The point is it scared Moses. This was not a little garter snake wiggling on the ground. This was enough to make a seasoned man who spent 40 years in the wilderness. It was enough to make him run. And the symbolism was not lost on him. The serpent, Moses understood this.

The serpent was the emblem of Egyptian royal power. The rearing cobra that sat on Pharaoh's crown was a sign of his authority and his protection. Moses grew up looking at it. That cobra was everywhere in, the emblem was everywhere in Egypt. It represented Pharaoh. He had seen it on the headdresses of the most powerful people in Egypt. So the staff that he had seen. he surrendered became the symbol of the power he was being sent to confront.

And he just fled from it. And the Lord said to Moses, put forth thine hand and take it by the tail. Now, if you've ever called a snake, you already know you don't pick up a snake by its tail. That's right. You're going to get this. because that snake's going to whip around and bite your hand. That's right. You can't pick up a snake by his tail.

Unless you like being dead. You got to pick up a snake behind its head where it can't turn around and bite you. Taking a snake by the tail gives the serpent the full length of its body to come around and strike at you. may not be your hand that it goes after, be any part of your body, depending on how long a snake is. So God asked Moses to handle a serpent in precisely the way

Moses' training told him would get him killed. There's no scripture that says, Moses protestant said, Are you serious? You've got to be kidding. We all know you can't pick up a serpent by his tail. Certainly, you mean

grab its head, right? God said grab its tail, and Moses obeyed. Charles Burgeon observed hundreds of years ago that God frequently requires the one method that a human's experience has taught him or her to avoid because faith is only demonstrated

where competence has been set aside. If you're going to use your training and competence, you're not going to require faith. Nothing wrong with training, nothing wrong with competence, education skills, but they don't require faith. So Alexander McLaurin, the great Baptist preacher in Manchester, England,

in the late 1800s, he noted that the serpent changed back into a rod in Moses' hand. not before Moses grabbed it. So when McLaurin was teaching, his congregation, is that obedience arrives during the act of obedience, during the act of carrying out an instruction from the Lord, not in advance of it.

Moses had to believe, he had to obey. He had to grab that serpent by his tail. He didn't know what God was going to do. with it. He just knew God said, grab that snake by his tail, and he carried out the instruction, even though it did not make sense to him. But the

fact that he carried it out is what enabled God to do the next thing, which was turn the snake back into a run. That's right, Rick. So there's a sequence here. There's a sequence of surrender. Fear,

obedience, restoration. That's the pattern. Surrender, fear, obedience and restoration. And that's the pattern nearly every calling in scripture. And I think Rick would agree, we've observed that as in our own personal lives. It's a very practical experience of that.

First, the thing has to be released. Moses could not have seen what the staff was capable of while he was still holding it. So the transformation happened after he threw it to the ground, after he got it out of his hand. He had it in his hand.

What is in your hand? And then God tells him, get it out of your hand, right? So the same principle, Jesus states it in a general form in Matthew 1625 by saying, whosoever will save his life should lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake. Find it. In other words, what do he have?

Throw it away, give it to God. Not throw it away in the sense of garbage or refuge. but just get it out of your hand and get it where God can use it. And then in John 1224, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it braineth forths much fruit.

And so the seed in the hand is a seed. The seed in the ground is a harvest. I'll say that again. The seed in the hand remains, a seed, but the seed in the ground is a harvest. Now, only way to get from one to the other is to get it out of your hand and in the ground. Second, the surrender produced something frightening. Think about that. This is honest, and it should be taught honestly. Moses obeyed, and the result terrified him. Now, let me ask you something, Rick. Have you ever just gone out and obeyed God

and after you did it, it scared the daylights out of you that you did it. I know it's been in my case, you know, sometimes you take that step of faith and obedience to God and you're like, what have I done? What is going on? You know, scripture does not promise that that surrender feels good at the moment of release. It frankly scares you. But then the third thing is, is he had to pick it up again, Rick.

And in a way that violated everything that he knew, and you kind of touched on this. Note, like McLaren mentioned, you talked about in verse four, and it became a rod in his hand. The transformation back into a rod happened as a result of obedience and the moment of grasping.

Not before. Moses did not watch the serpent turn into a staff and then safely picking up. He reached for, I'll tell you, gives me the hebe jeebees just saying, I reach for a live snake by the tail, and the change occurred while his hand was closing. And this is the precise picture of obedience.

The evidence arrives during the act, not before it. The evidence arrives during the act, not before it. And then the fourth thing. And there's a real lesson here. He received the same object back, but changed in its function. It was the same thing. It was the same rod. The rod didn't suddenly become a different kind of rod or something,

but its function moving forward was completely different. And that's what connects this series and what we've observed on a regular basis here. For instance, the woman who touched Jesus' garment asked for healing and was called daughter. the thief asked to be remembered and was promised paradise. Moses surrendered to stick and received the rod of God. And so this application should give us an idea of, you know, everything involved in our lesson today. What God asked for is nearly always what you are already holding. And the asking is rarely comfortable with it.

because the thing you have is a thing that you've been depending on. And God asks you to throw it to the ground. Proverbs 3-5 states the underlying instruction, lean not on their own understanding. The staff was Moses' lean. It was his lean, right? Charles Bridges observed that God met three objectives with just one question. A demonstration and a reassurance in that order,

and that the delay in answering directly was instruction rather than reluctance. Good lesson today. Doc, I'm not afraid of snakes. I'm not terrified of snakes, but I don't really care to pick them up. No. And I'm not afraid of them, but I have no desire to pick them up. If I had a choice between picking up a large snake or a bobcat, I choose the bobcat. I just don't have any desire to kick up a snake.

I'm not afraid of it. I just don't like it, okay? When I lived in Texas, I was in Texas for 10 years. One of the things I love to go to, Doc, was every year there'd be a rattlesnake roundoff. Oh, I've heard of that. Texans right now, you know what I'm talking about. Guys go out and they compete on a Saturday, and they round up. rattlesnakes, put them in a sack, and then they bring them in.

And what they did, what they'd do, Doc, is that they'd have a, kind of like a, you know, like an above-ground swimming pool. And they'd dump all the rattlesnakes in there. And then the guys would get in there and walk around with them. With snakes? Yes. Yes. I'm like, you guys are crazy, right?

But it was fun to watch. It was fun to watch But there's no way I would get in there with those rattlesnakes, right? But I, you know, I'm just saying this. The Lord will ask us to do something that we just think, that's not right. That is not a normal thing to do. There was one thing you said here, Doc, is your fourth.

Point, Moses received the same object back, but it had changed in its function. It was still the same rod. It still had the same markings on it. It still was weathered and worn. Do you know what a rod, you know, that's been carved? I mean, this is a shepherd's rod. It was carved. It was snoooth.

Do you know what that looks like when you have a large stick that somebody has used for 40 years? Okay, it's got markings on it. It's got its own coloration. The rod that God handed back to Moses was the same rod, but its function was different. That's the point. That really hit me, Doc. The same thing that you give God, he gives it. back to you, it's still the same thing you gave to him, but it has a different function.

He's using it for his glory, but it's the same thing that you gave him. So there might be an automobile. It might be a property. It could be a lot of things that you give to God and say, use this. He changes its function. It's still the same thing, but he changes its function. And now his power is on it. His anointing is on, his blessing is on.

That is an amazing thing to ponder. Well, that's it for today. Thank you for being with us here on this Faith Friday. We'll be back on Monday with another lesson from Proverbs chapter 30. God bless. Thank you for watching Morning Manor. We hope your soul has been nourished today. We welcome and appreciate your prayers and financial support

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