Wisdom's Call: 30 Days in the House of LifeVoorbeeld

It THE LEADER LAYS IT DOWN

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh tells you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh. It will become a serpent.’” So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord had commanded. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a serpent. But then Pharaoh called the wise men and sorcerers—the magicians of Egypt, and they also did the same thing by their occult practices. Each one threw down his staff, and it became a serpent. But Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs. However, Pharaoh’s heart was hard, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said. (Ex. 7:8–13)

Have you ever heard seasoned saints share the Bible’s wisdom? You can taste in their stories the God-given “life seasoning” as they toss details from memory into the pot and let them simmer with God’s Word.

Sometimes the stories are bitter, sometimes tangy and spicy, sometimes pleasantly sweet. Life has its own way of flavoring what Scripture has already revealed to be true.

Years ago, I sat at the kitchen table of a wizened missionary. He and his precious and stalwart wife once smuggled Bibles behind the Iron Curtain during the cruelest days of the Soviet Union. He had certainly seen the good, bad, and ugly humanity of clergy and lay leaders in his day!

His eyes sparkled with faraway stories obviously playing on the screen behind his eyes, a screen that was out of view for everyone except him. Then those same eyes, full of memories, suddenly fixated on us at the table. He began to talk about the time when Moses and Aaron locked horns with Pharaoh’s sorcerers in Exodus 7. He preached to us on God manifesting His glory and power in the faces of those who hated Yahweh and His people. He discussed the prophetic warning given that Pharaoh foolishly ignored.

And then . . . his eyes danced as he spoke of Aaron’s staff.

“You see, when Aaron threw his staff down in Pharaoh’s court as Yahweh had told him to do, he discovered the serpent that Yahweh said would be there.” Yes and amen. If God says it, it is so, and you can believe it with all your heart!

Then the moment came when all the staffs in the court scene were thrown down, revealing serpents within. The snakes writhed and battled each other, until Aaron’s staff devoured those of the sorcerers. What a terrifyingly tense scene that must have been.

Our brother leaned forward and lowered his voice to continue the story, nearly whispering:

“Now, up until that moment, Aaron had been helping to lead God’s people, carrying the staff around, and completely unaware there was a serpent in it—until Yahweh told him.” He went on. “Because Aaron’s staff was given by Yahweh, the serpent He promised was under divine command to show His glory and power in Pharaoh’s court. But because the magicians’ staffs were in the service of idols and false gods, they were defeated and consumed by the display of glory of the One True God.”

And when Aaron picked that staff back up, now likely several times heavier with the weight of the others ingested, what object lesson was he left with?

Our brother concluded: “There’s a snake inside every leadership staff, and that snake will do the bidding of whatever god we serve—false or true.”

Wisdom’s takeaway from Aaron’s staff is this: We can be our own biggest obstacles to ministry and kingdom advance. Be careful with whatever measure of leadership God gives you. Whether it’s at home in our family, with friends, in ministry, the workplace, the world, whatever. Lay it down constantly for Yahweh’s purposes and take it up with confidence . . . knowing whose house it serves.