Exodus 4:1-10
4 Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’” 2 The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. 4 But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6 Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. 7 Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. 8 “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. 9 If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”
10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”
“But Lord,” Moses was saying, “I can’t be Your spokesman in this situation. Why, I wouldn’t have any answers when those guys started firing questions at me.”
Before we consider the Lord’s response, stop and think about that lame excuse for a moment. It has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it? It’s a pretext mouthed by many believers today. “Lord, I can’t do that, because I’ll get in a verbal corner and won’t know how to handle it. Somebody will ask me, ‘What about the heathen in Africa?’ or ‘How did they fit dinosaurs into Noah’s ark?’ I’ll get tongue-tied. I won’t know what to say, and I’ll appear ridiculous and foolish in the eyes of other people. No, I can’t do that, Lord. You can see that, can’t You? I just don’t have all the answers.”
Maybe you remember what it was like in high school or college to have a teacher or professor who stranded himself out on a logical limb. He found himself in the wrong, everyone knew it, and yet he stubbornly refused to admit it. What did you do? Chances are, you began to bear down on him, sawing off that flimsy limb with a set of sharp-toothed facts. Why did you do that? Because there is something inside of us that wants the other person simply to admit, “Yeah, I was wrong.”
I have never lost respect for any individual who replied to a question with the answer, “I just don’t know.” On the other hand, I have lost a great deal of respect for those who knew they were wrong, and knew that I knew they were wrong, but could not bring themselves to admit it.
Direct question: Why do we feel we have to have all the answers at our fingertips? Straight answer: Pride. Pride says, “If I don’t have a ready comeback, if I say ‘I don’t know,’ they’ll laugh at me.” But that’s not true at all. Intelligent, thoughtful people won’t laugh; they will realize that no one has all the answers.
— Charles R. Swindoll
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