What’s in Your Hand?

Pastor Melinda Song
24 October 2021

INTRODUCTION

We love to ask God questions but from Genesis and throughout Scripture, we also find God asking humans probing questions. 

Genesis 3:9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 

Genesis 3:13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 

Genesis 16:8a He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?”  

Genesis 32:27 God asked Jacob, “What is your name?” 

Exodus 4:1–5 (NKJV) 
4 Then Moses answered and said, “But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you.’” 
² So the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” 
He said, “A rod.” 
³ And He said, “Cast it on the ground.” So he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it. ⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail” (and he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand), ⁵ “that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 

God asked this question when he met with Moses at the burning bush. Moses begins with questioning himself, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (3:11-12), to questioning God – “Who should I say sent me?” (3:13-14). Moses was being realistic. He knew how difficult it can be to organize people on behalf of a meaningful cause! 

And so he asks: “What if they don’t believe me?” (4:1). God then replies with a question: “What is that in your hand?” 

In this short little exchange between God and Moses, we will find some principles on how God can turn the ordinary things and ordinary people into the extraordinary.

God begins by asking Moses, “What is that in your hand?” Your journey from ordinary to extraordinary begins when you…

I. Examine Your Hand 

When Moses replied “a rod”, he was referring to his shepherd’s staff, a long staff with a curved head that varied from 3 to 6 feet long.

It was used to guide, lead and protect the sheep. It was used to support the shepherd and help him climb up and down the steep mountain places as he led and looked for his sheep. It was used to defend the flock and the shepherd against the attacks of wild animals and others who would threaten the flock. The rod was indispensable, essential, vital to the everyday life of the shepherd.

That rod represented who Moses was. 

But looking at the rod also reminded Moses of those days when he was Prince of Egypt when he held the world in his hand. Now he has nothing but a dry, dead stick, a reminder that he was just a shepherd. 

That rod represented all the problems in his life.

That rod was all that Moses possessed. He did not even own the sheep that he kept. They belonged to his father-in-law Jethro (Exo 3:1). That rod reminded him that he was poor and owned nothing. 

That rod reminded Moses that his life was filled with vast potential at one time, but that now, he was merely a has been, a washed-up nobody on the backside of the desert. 

And here is God telling him to return to Egypt and face Pharoah knowing well that shepherds were despised by the Egyptians (Gen. 46:33-34).

The Lord is going to take this despised thing and person to do a work for Him, for Moses will carry this staff with him into Egypt and before Pharaoh.

In today’s context, the staff could mean your regrets, disappointments and failures in life. Or in a positive sense, it could be your position in society and the way God has blessed you with your intellect, status, material possession and family.

Here are some examples of how ordinary things and ordinary people become extraordinary in the hands of God.

1. (Exodus 4:2) Moses and his rod. God took that insignificant stick and worked wonders with it. 

1. It was used to confront the Egyptian soothsayers – 7:12. 
2. It was used to turn the waters of Egypt to blood – 7:17-20. 
3. It was used to bring forth the plague of frogs – 8:5. 
4. It was used to bring forth the plague of lice – 8:16. 
5. It was used to bring forth the plague of thunder and hail – 9:23. 
6. It was used to call and east wind that blew in the plague of locusts – 10:13. 
7. It was used to part the Red Sea – 14:16. 
8. It was used to cause the Red Sea to come together again, drowning Pharaoh and his army – 14:27. 
9. It was used to bring water from a rock in the desert – 17:5. 
10. It was used to bring victory over the Amalekites – 17:9 
11. (Judges 15:15-17) Samson killed 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.
12. (1 Samuel 17:40) David (not a warrior) killed the giant, Goliath, with a sling and five stones.
13. (John 6:9-14) The Lad’s 5 loaves and 2 fish fed five thousand. 

What you have in your hand is enough in the hands of God

Moses needs to look no further than his own hands to find what he needs for the task that is being given to him. Many believers want to do great things for God if they just had more money … more time … more energy … or more help. The mistake such people are making is that they’re focusing on what they don’t have when the Lord wants them to realize what they do have. 

By simply shifting our focus, we can trade in our inadequacies – all our cannots, should nots, and would nots – to receive a life filled with miracles and abundance instead.

God simply wants YOU to know what you have. Whatever you have is enough for God to do something miraculous.

Even when we don’t see it God has been at work in your life

Moses wasn’t aware that God’s hand had been at work throughout his life. 

He spent forty years in the palace of the Egyptian Pharaoh learning the ways of the Egyptians so that when the time comes, he knows how to handle the Egyptian people when God asked him to rescue the Israelites.

The next 40 years were spent in the wilderness being prepared in the desert’s harsh environment where he learned the terrain and had his character and behaviour moulded and shaped in the most challenging place.

And finally, the next 40 years in the same desert that he was already familiar with, he lead millions of Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land. 

The key to a useful life in service to God is not in waiting for the right moment, but in using what you have in every moment. 

1. What has God placed in your hands? 
2. Whatever that is, use it to His glory. 

II. Empty Your Hand

³ And He said, “Cast it on the ground.” So he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it. ⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail” (and he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand), ⁵ “that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 

God instructed Moses to cast the rod onto the ground. Moses obeyed, and as the staff struck the ground, it became a writhing serpent. It was dangerous and Moses became fearful and scurried away from it. 

“Reach out your hand and take it by its tail.” It took faith to pick it back up again, especially because grabbing the snake’s tail left Moses vulnerable to snakebite. Nevertheless, Moses obeyed the Lord’s words and it became a staff in his hand. 

If God could do all that with a stick, imagine what he could do with Moses! And imagine what he might be able to do with you!

The Almighty Creator of the universe is able to use any ordinary object that is yielded to him in faith. The process is not complicated but handing it over to God may be the hardest part for us. 

It is human nature to cling to our possessions – no matter how small and seemingly unimportant it is. God wants to know if his children trust him enough to let him have it.

To illustrate this important point I would like us to look at a familiar passage in John Chapter 6. 

In the midst of miracles happening among the Five Thousand – blind eyes opening, the lame walking, and the deaf hearing – Jesus presented his disciples with the problem of feeding the hungry crowd.

John 6:7–11 (NLT) 
⁷ Philip replied, “Even if we worked for months, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed them!” 
⁸ Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. ⁹ “There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?” 
¹⁰ “Tell everyone to sit down,” Jesus said. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. (The men alone numbered about 5,000.) ¹¹ Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish. And they all ate as much as they wanted. 

Imagine you were in that desperate place and you have something no one else in the Five Thousand has – lunch. What would you do? I would have probably slipped off to a private spot long enough to enjoy it. Or, at the most, shared it with my immediate family, or with only those around me. Not this lad. He had learned the secret of surrender. 

This young man, like all the rest of the Five Thousand, had received from God. It is doubtful that when he placed it in Jesus’ hands, he had any idea of what the Lord intended to do. The Lord had ministered to (and probably healed) him. Now the least he could do was minister to (or serve) Jesus in some way.

The moment this boy offered his lunch to Jesus, he took a step out of his own agenda and a step into Christ’s; his focus went from his selfish interests to Kingdom work. 

That young boy had the same thing you have to offer – what God has already given you, what He has placed in your hands – that and nothing more. 

The staff in Moses’s hand was just an old, dead piece of wood. It was of no or little value of any kind. But it represented his whole life. It symbolized his ambition, vocation, wisdom, skills, status, strength or might. His rod was his identity, his instrument, his weapon or defence in the desert. Therefore, when Moses willingly cast his rod on the ground before God, he was actually surrendering or presenting his whole life to God. 

This shows Moses’ willingness to die to himself. It takes such a willingness, disposition or mindset to be greatly used of God!

That thing “in your hand” can be anything that gets in the way of allowing God to be and do whatever He wants to be and do in you. “Drop it!” 

Has God ever asked you, “What’s that in your hand?” What if God were to ask you to give it up … to “drop it”?

Whatever is “in your hand” must not become an object or activity of ultimate concern, with which you are preoccupied to the extent that you spend more time concerned about it than with the Lord and with what He wants to do in your life. 

Will you do this with what you have in your life? Whatever it is in your hand, will you cast it before Him and then do what He bids you to do? 

III. Experience God’s Hand

In a wonderful sermon entitled “No Little People, No Little Places,” Francis Schaeffer pointed out that in order for it to become an instrument of divine power, the staff of Moses had to become the rod of God.

Exodus 4:20 (NKJV) 
²⁰ Then Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. 

While Exodus 17:8–9 (NKJV) 
⁸ Now Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. ⁹ And Moses said to Joshua, “Choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.” 

Having surrendered his rod to God, Moses ceased to see it as belonging to him, or as an ordinary shepherd’s staff. Moses began to refer to it as “the rod of God”.

The Lord can take that which is nothing, and if it is cast before Him, He can transform it to be mightily used in His service and for His glory. 

Let me share with you an illustration that will open your mind to the potential and possibilities that God has placed right before us in the ordinariness of life. 

When we walk on the beach and feel the sand beneath our toes, we rarely consider that we are stepping on the second most abundant element on earth—silica. 

According to Britannica.com, silica, also called silicon dioxide, is a compound of the two most abundant elements in Earth’s crust, silicon and oxygen, SiO2. The mass of Earth’s crust is 59 per cent silica, making it the main constituent of more than 95 per cent of the known rocks.

It has existed for as long as the earth has had dry land, but only in the past few decades have people discovered some of what it can do. When silica is purified, made into ingots, and then sliced into wafers, it can be manufactured into microchips and semiconductors. These chips become the “brains” of our laptops, our smartphones, our cars, and, more and more often, even our homes. 

In the process, the ordinary and common sand we step on has been transformed into something valuable and very useful. Similarly, we just need to discover the vast potential in the ordinariness of our lives and let God turn them into something extraordinary. 

Moses climbed that mountain that day with a dead stick he has been carrying around for forty years. In all that time, that stick identified him. That stick was limiting his life and his potential. Once Moses yielded it to the Lord, it ceased to define him. When he did, it became a symbol of the power of God in his life. 

“What is that in your hand?” 

It is not just Moses that God asks this question of. What do you carry today? What defines you? What are you holding on to that holds you back and keeps you from being everything God wants you to be? 

• Our sins, failures and regrets 
• Our hurts and sorrows
• Talents, abilities and accomplishments
• Wealth 
• Family

All of these things, whether they are good or bad, identify us and control our lives. Even the They become liabilities when we depend on them instead of the Lord. Like a shepherd leans on his staff, we lean on the things that we hold in our hands. But when we like Moses release and surrender them all the cross we can rise above the things that we hold in our hands. 

What do you have to offer? Maybe not much… Just an old stick? Well, it is not your ability but your availability that God is looking for. He is more interested in using your little so that the glory belongs to Him than to use someone who sees themself as a spiritual giant who has all that they need in themself. 

Remember…

• Samson slayed hundreds of Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.
• David defeated Goliath with a slingshot and five stones.
• Jesus used a young boy’s lunch — five loaves and two fish — to feed thousands of hungry people.

So go ahead and give God what you’ve been holding onto. 

You’ll discover that anytime you surrender what’s in your hands into His hands, He will perform miracles and bring the increase. In all likelihood, He will give you back the rod you’ve surrendered — but this time it will be the rod of God to change the world.

Let us pray.