There are some super powerful ‘Rod of God’ lessons we can learn from watching God deliver Israel in what is commonly known as the Exodus. The Lord used the staff of Moses and Aaron, an ordinary stick, to bring devastating plagues, ten of them in fact, to a nation that had used and abused His people. God can and does harness the ordinary to do the extraordinary.

The University of California at Berkley agreed to coordinate an international effort to locate extraterrestrial life. To accomplish this impossible task, Berkley asked home computer users around the world to contact them over the Internet and download a program called SETI@home. The SETI software makes a connection over the Internet to a computer in California and downloads a “work unit”—that is, a set of measurements from a particular part of the sky. The work unit is not large, but it takes the computer a while to crunch the numbers. When the work is done, the computer makes another Internet call to Berkeley, uploads its results, and downloads a new work unit. What today’s largest supercomputer could never do alone, over a million ordinary home computers can easily do.

Sometimes the best way to accomplish the impossible is to harness the help of the ordinary. That is precisely how the church works best. No one can do it alone, but if we each do what we can, the unattainable becomes attainable, and the church can be all that God intended it to be.¹ Now, that’s a different kind of illustration — I don’t know about the whole extraterrestrial life piece. One minister asked the Lord about ‘is there life on other planets?’ and the Lord responded ‘Yes there is life on other planets, I am out here.’ The point of this illustration is that God can and does, at times, harness the ordinary to do the extraordinary. Powerful Can’t-Miss Lessons on the Rod of God, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This week’s call is:

God can and does take the ordinary and make something extraordinary out of it. Look to Him as the source of all authority and power. Expect great things from your great God.

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Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believer’s life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

Question:  Please share your testimony of how God took the ordinary and turned into a miracle in your life. Please share your story in the comments section below.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes

Don’t Miss These Lessons on the Rod of God

• As we go through today’s podcast, we will be using the terms staff, scepter, or rod interchangeably because in the Bible they are exactly that.

Genesis 49:8–10 (TNIV) — 8 “Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down to you. 9 You are a lion’s cub, Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse him? 10 The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations be his.

• Closely connected with the lion language of verse nine is the scepter language of verse 10.
• The lion, as you know, is a majestic dominion oriented animal.
• We talked about that in the podcast entitled, ‘How the Blessing of God Adds Value to Your Life.“
• But, what we didn’t talk about was the scepter.
• What is a scepter anyway?
• A scepter (Hebrew shebet; Greek skeptron) is simply a staff or rod.
• Shepherds had them, patriarchs had them, kings had them, and the everyday guy on the street had them.
• Rods and staffs were part of the nomadic and agrarian cultures that predominated the Biblical era.
• There was nothing outstandingly special about a staff any more than today’s hammer or a screwdriver.
• At the end of a Biblical day, a staff was a tool — nothing more than a plain old stick.
• But the way of God is to, at times, take an everyday normal something and infuse it with His power — taking the ordinary to super-ordinary status.
• Everything is ordinary until God gets involved.
• It’s that way with all areas of the human experience.
• Situations only take on specialness when God adds His dynamic self to the equation.
• Call it divine advertising if you would.
• Now, one thing about these different areas where God advertises, like creation, for example.

Psalm 19:1 (AMP) — 1 To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. THE HEAVENS declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows and proclaims His handiwork.

• Creation, God’s handiwork, shows that there is a God, but you cannot come to know Him through His Creation.
• You can only know God one way, and that way is Jesus.

John 14:6 (AMP) — 6 Jesus said to him, I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except by (through) Me.

The Rod of God in the Hand of Moses

Exodus 4:1–3 (ESV) — 1 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—

• So, it just so happened that during this encounter with God, Moses had something in his hand, a rod, a staff, a stick.
• The Lord told Moses to take the everyday and throw it on the floor.
• And, when He did that, Moses plain old stick became something much more.
• Everything becomes much more when God gets a hold of it.
• That’s one of the powerful Rod of God lessons that we can learn.
• Listen to this same passage in the Amplified translation.

Exodus 4:2–4 (AMP) — 1 AND MOSES answered, But behold, they will not believe me or listen to and obey my voice; for they will say, The Lord has not appeared to you. 2 And the Lord said to him, What is that in your hand? And he said, A rod. 3 And He said, Cast it on the ground. And he did so and it became a serpent [the symbol of royal and divine power worn on the crown of the Pharaohs]; and Moses fled from before it. 4 And the Lord said to Moses, Put forth your hand and take it by the tail. And he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand,

• God got a hold of Moses’ stick.
• He turned into a lightning rod for the miraculous.
• Think about it for a moment.
• The stick got a promotion.
• It started the morning as an ordinary everyday piece of wood.
• But at the end of the day with God in it, now, it’s no longer an ordinary anything.
• The rod now has a name.
• Look at it in Exodus four, twenty.

Exodus 4:20 (AMP) — 20 And Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on donkeys, and he returned to the land of Egypt; and Moses took the rod of God in his hand.

• The once ordinary photo synthesized stick is now the Rod of God.
• What if the Lord appeared to you on this day with a special mission, and He asked you to throw on the ground what you have in your hand?
• If you had something in your hand, what would that be? — an iPad, a laptop, a cell phone, a smartwatch — some high-tech technological piece of something.
• Can you imagine God asking you to throw down your cell phone and transforming it into a snake?
• And with that thought, here’s the Bible background of the day.

Another ‘Rod of God’ Lesson: Why a Rod, Why a Snake?

• The rod in ancient Egypt was a symbol of royal authority and power — that’s per the JPS Torah Commentary²
• Kings are noted in God’s Word as having staff or rods as part of their ‘ruling’ wardrobe.

Isaiah 14:5 (ESV) — 5 The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers,

• Here’s another passage that illustrates this from Isaiah.

Isaiah 10:24 (ESV) — 24 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD of hosts: “O my people, who dwell in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrians when they strike with the rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did.

• Here’s a ruling with a staff passage from the book of Genesis: a prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.

Genesis 49:10 (AMP) — 10 The scepter or leadership shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh [the Messiah, the Peaceful One] comes to Whom it belongs, and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.

• So, one of the lessons that we can learn from ‘the rod of God’ straight off the top is that God is the head of all rule and authority.
• The Lord will take the symbol of rule and authority and demonstrate to Pharaoh, who is the real boss of planet earth.
• There are a plethora of scriptures that reference this very point.

Daniel 2:21 (ESV) — 21 He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding;

Psalm 75:6–7 (ESV) — 6 For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, 7 but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.

• Do you remember Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon?
• He also had to learn this same lesson as Pharaoh on where governing authority originates.

Daniel 4:17 (ESV) — 17 The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’

• God sits at the top of all government and rule: that’s ‘rod of God’ lesson number one.

Why a Snake?

• But now, in this Pharaoh encounter, why did the Lord turn a staff into a stick?
• There are a few other curious questions that arise out of this account.
• How about ‘what kind of snake did the rod get turned into?’
• We look at the JPS Torah Commentary again because it gives us some clues that help us answer these questions.
• And with that thought, here’s the historical background of the day.

“The snake, the uraeus, represented the patron cobra-goddess of Lower Egypt. Worn over the forehead on the headdress of the pharaohs, it was emblematic of divinely protected sovereignty, and it served as a menacing symbol of death dealt to the enemies of the crown.”³

• The cobra was the snake emblematic of Egypt like the bald eagle is emblematic of the United States.
• But, it was more than that because the Egyptians worshiped the cobra as a little ‘g’ god.
• Because of this, I don’t believe that the Lord turned the staff of Moses into an ordinary everyday variety of snake-like a garden snake or a ball python like a pet shops sell.
• No, the Lord turned that walking stick into a man-sized cobra, the very symbol of Egypt!
• A cobra? Yes — Now ask yourself, why did the Father God pick that particular species of reptile?
• The answer lies in the back part of this miracle.
• Make sure you focus on the other parts of this miracle — don’t let these pass you by.
• Yes, the Lord did a transformational miracle by turning rod to reptile.
• But, there was also a reversal.
• There was a point where the stick turned cobra ceased returned to its original wooden form.
• In the Moses encounter, the Lord told him to grab that snake by the tail, and when he did, the working of miracles went into operation a second time.
• This miracle went both ways: from stick to snake and from snake back to stick.
• The Lord intends to send a message to Pharaoh.
• A message like…

“Pharaoh, you may think you are some kind of hot-shot but I, the Lord, the Most High God, is the one who took you from a twig and made you ruler over Egypt. What have you done with your ruler-ship? All you have done is become a menacing death dealing power capable of all kinds of mayhem. But, I the Lord, can and will snatch you by your tail and turn your cobra face back into a toothpick. And, I can do it anytime time I want to. You are nothing but a twig in my hand and just a little pressure from one of my fingers and I will snap your kingdom right in two.”

• Look at how this first encounter with Pharaoh played out.

The ‘Rod of God in the Hand of Aaron’

Exodus 7:8–13 (ESV) — 8 Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 9 “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Prove yourselves by working a miracle,’ then you shall say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.'” 10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. 11 Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. 12 For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. 13 Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.

• Okay, so Moses and Aaron appear before Pharaoh, rods and all.
• In Moses’ hand is the rod that the Lord turned into a snake in at Moses’ feet.
• What happens?
• Instead of Moses just throwing down his staff — a natural thing to do since Moses knew that it would work — after all, he saw it in action, the Lord instructs Aaron to throw down his unproven staff.
• So, God changes plans on Moses.
• Moses has to trust the Word of the Lord without the aid of personal experience.
• That is, Moses had experience with his rod turning into a snake, but he didn’t see Aaron’s rod do that.
• Yet and still, Moses obeys the Lord, and the result is that Aaron’s rod turns into a cobra.
• Now, Moses is still holding his staff while Aaron’s staff is wiggling all over the floor.
• So, as it turns out, Pharaoh is in the presence of not one but two God-empowered sticks.
• If I were Pharaoh, I wouldn’t go for those odds.
• But here’s the thing, God turning Aaron’s rod into a snake means, at the very least, that the supernatural miracle of transforming Moses rod into a snake was no fluke.
• The Lord repeated it with a different staff in the hands of a different man.
• Now, the magicians of Egypt try and jump into the act.
• They turn their staffs into snakes also.
• A slithering snake fight ensues.
• You understand that when I say ‘magicians of Egypt,’ I’m not talking about the ‘Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey’ ‘pull a rabbit out of the hat’ kind of magicians.
• These magicians were from the dark side — sorcerers is a more apropos term.
• You know, the black arts were part and parcel of Egyptian society.

Many texts from ancient Egypt, including books of magical incantations, have revealed segments of the culture that were steeped in magic (Lichteim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 1:29–49, 1:131–33, 2:120–31; Pritchard, Ancient Near East, 326–29).⁴

• So, it’s Aaron’s single rod against the best of Satan has — represented by all the fear and dark magic of Egypt.
• Aaron’s rod seems to be out-staffed – sorry for the pun.
• All those sinful sticks against God’s holy Rod.
• The result? — well, you know the story.
• God’s righteous rod swallows up the enemy, all the enemy — not one magician’s snake survived to see another incantation.
• So, in your mind’s eye, imagine the scene.
• What do you see now? –
• You have an astonished enemy in the person of Pharaoh; you have a group of sorcerers who are worried about their next paycheck, you have a prophet of God holding his rod while his brother is ‘rod-less’ because his rod is one big fat cobra ready to take a nap over a full stomach.
• Now, even though the scripture doesn’t specifically state it, yet it does imply that Aaron reached out his hand and grabbed that fat snake by its tail, transforming it back into the stiff stick, it was in the first place.
• A well-nourished yet straightforward staff but a staff none the less.

The Rod of God and Water Turned to Blood

• Dropdown a few more verses in Exodus seven for more ‘rod of God in the hand of Aaron’ action.

Exodus 7:19–222 (AMP) — 19 And the Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron, Take your rod and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their streams, rivers, pools, and ponds of water, that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, in containers both of wood and of stone. 20 Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded; [Aaron] lifted up the rod and smote the waters in the river in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and all the waters in the river were turned to blood. 21 And the fish in the river died; and the river became foul smelling, and the Egyptians could not drink its water, and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. 22 But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their enchantments and secret arts; and Pharaoh’s heart was made hard and obstinate, and he did not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.

• So, here we have the first of the Ten Plagues against the little ‘g’ gods of the Egyptians.
• This next account is again Aaron’s rod, not Moses.
• Aaron takes his rod and, in obedience to God’s command, strikes the waters of the Nile.
• You know the Egyptians worshiped the Nile.
• And with that thought, here’s the historical Bible background of the day.

Pharaoh was supposed to have control over the Nile (along with his entourage of magicians, enchanters, and wise men), and yearly performed rituals and ceremonies to “keep the Nile flowing and rising.” Nilometers were kept to record the water level of the Nile. Even the cosmos was connected with the orderliness of the Nile, and vice versa. The water of the Nile was the life source of the Egyptians, the blood of life to them, but it now becomes increasingly a source of judgment and death. A failed Nile meant an imminent threat of death and disorder.⁵

• Pharaoh and his sorcerers were supposed to have control of the Nile.
• That turns out to be a complete joke; the rod of God slaughters that idea.
• The Lord turns the waters that were the lifeblood of a nation into a literal blood bath.
• The sorcerers of Egypt try to challenge the Lord by showing that they can do the same thing.
• When they do, when the sorcerers conjure water into crimson blood by their black arts, they only add to their problem.
• Now, there is even less clean bloodless water.
• Just like man to screw something up even more than it is.
• Now, you know, take note that by all of these events, the magicians show off their limited ability.
• It is openly apparent for anyone to see.
• For a while, these sorcerers of a mean kind were able to turn the water into blood; they were unable to turn the blood back into water.
• The dark powers of Egypt could not reverse the workings of the Most High God.
• The Egyptian sticks, though numerous, were the ones outnumbered.
• So now, there is no fresh water in Egypt — only blood-contaminated water.
• It’s obvious, the works of darkness are no match for the Kingdom of Light.

#S4-015: The Cleansing of the Leper: Why God Put It In The Bible for You

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