“…Moses pleaded, “Lord, please! Send anyone else. Then the Lord became angry with Moses.” Exodus 4:13,14a NLT
Moses’s attempt to be honest with God was a bust. He blurted out what he really thought, and God was on the verge of punching his ticket. Everyone in 2025 seems to think we need a God we can talk to and reason with who is understanding and compassionate. Sometimes, I think he is that way, but not always. This wild and woolly God Moses converses with makes the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.
The Honest Truth
I must be truthful with you, the reader, I have trouble being honest with God—honest to God I do. Isn’t this the reason we love buffer zones between God and us? Thankfully, we have Jesus, and we pray in his name. [1] He returned to his father to represent us and become our advocate before God. [2] We have a few priests absolving, temples, rituals, wafers, a bit of port instead of blood, written prayers instead of our own, a few bells ringing, some choirs singing, some incense wafting, and candles burning. We are a cross-wearing bunch who like to bow at symbols and genuflect at anything gold and sparkling. We want to avoid what happened to Moses—he got honest and God got mad! And when God gets angry, bad things happen. Remember a few of his greatest hits: the ground opens up, the sea crashes down, horrible hemorrhoids, waking up in a pile of dead frogs, covered in locusts, gnats crawling up noses. [3]
Honestly!
I have been walking with God for nearly sixty years, and I still don’t have what it takes to get honest with him. I’m over in the bushes with Adam, still hiding from the truth about me and even her. God is looking for me, and I’m in hiding. Sometimes I’m close to speaking my mind to him, but then I duck behind a bush. I’ve been well taught that I should show God some respect. From my earliest days, I was told to use a formula to talk to God. ACTS, remember that one? Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. The idea was to have a successful “quiet time” [4] by breaking time with God into four equal segments. Don’t leave adorationuntil you have completed that time frame. Next, confess your sins, etc. I find it takes more time to adore God now that I’ve known him for a long time. And I don’t often have that much sin to confess because I’ve had a long time to learn to deny, cover up, and reclassify them as personality traits. I’ve read enough philosophy and psychology to accept the way I am. I then run up the white flag of surrender to sin after sin. Thanksgiving is a warm-up for the big show, which is supplication. That is, by far, the longest and easiest time because I get to ask for what I want, which is the jackpot at the end of my casino-like heart.
I can’t seem to cry out to God for what I really want, so let me give it a try: “God, make my new book a bestseller, God, keep me alive a lot longer than everyone else—my work is important, I won’t screw it up like Hezekiah. [5], Give me opportunities I can turn down, and then tell people I turned them down—they will whisper to one another, “Oh, he is so Godly.” Ok, ok, I feel pretty dirty right now, that is way too honest. I’m not sure if I’m being honest or not. I think I might even be showing off, spoofing you; I’m not even sure I know what I’m doing, or the content of my heart. I think I need therapy. Maybe this is therapy, I might need to see a priest. I told you I’m not very good at this honest-with-God thing because he knows my heart. He is the only one who does. My wife doesn’t know it, you don’t know it, I don’t even know it. “The honesty's too much.” [6] I think I’ll give up my quest to be honest with God and just do what he says. How about that?
What does God do when we say NO?
Moses has a different question: What do I do with a God who won’t take NO for an answer? I know we shouldn’t be thinking such unholy thoughts, but it seems God begins to bargain. God knows everything in advance because with God, there is no advance. There is no yesterday or tomorrow, only “I Am.” God exists in a simultaneous reality outside of time and space. When he sees Moses, the people of Israel, Pharaoh, and Egypt, he sees a finished painting. We are still in space and time, painting and being painted—God begins to paint.
“All right,” he said, “What about your brother Aaron the Levite? I know he speaks well. ( Moses can’t see what God sees, a meeting with Aaron that is to come days later) [7]
He is on his way to meet you now. He will be delighted to see you. Talk to him, and put the words in his mouth. I will be with both of you as you speak, and I will instruct you both in what to do. Aaron will be your spokesman to the people. He will be your mouthpiece, and you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say. And take your shepherd’s staff with you, and use it to perform the miraculous signs I have shown you. (Oh, by the way, Moses was 80 and Aaron 83). [8]
Surrender
Moses knows he doesn’t have a choice. He senses the discussion is over; it is time to do what God says. He can’t even contemplate the alternative he had considered a few minutes earlier. Talking with God usually includes preliminaries, the niceties of any relationship, like how children debate with their parents. Sometimes it is easy to agree, but other times, not possible. One side stubbornly refuses, one side stubbornly insists, and a door slams. But there comes a moment when the person in authority has made the last and best offer, and that is where Moses finds himself. God has made it clear that this mission is not optional and that every accommodation has been given to Moses.
Moses seemed sincere, unlike many of us who don’t mean what we say. Moses used his lack of eloquence as an excuse to cover up his fear of failure, because later he proved to be quite capable of speaking for himself. It was the stress of challenging the Pharaoh that gave him selective mutism. Before Pharaoh, he had to tell his wife Zipporah, then his father-in-law, Jethro/Reuel, then the elders of Israel. Finally submitting, he put his wife and boys on a donkey and headed back to Egypt. After all that, God almost killed Moses for his failure to circumcise his son Gershom. Zipporah leaped into action and circumcised him, then God left Moses alone. The next forty years would prove to be one pressure-packed moment after the next until he was laid to rest by God himself on Mount Nebo in modern-day Jordan.
Knowing God
Moses was in the select company of the six people God called “My servant.” [9] He must have known God intimately because he appealed to God many times. Yet he was astonishingly negligent on occasion. When he failed in his obvious obligation to have his son, Gershom, circumcised, he had to be bailed out by his wife. I’m not sure what God said to Moses about this, but it was serious enough that his wife didn’t have time to argue with Moses. This leads us to a final consideration—being honest with oneself.
Self as God
Self is God’s number one rival. Honesty with God is valuable and essential. As demonstrated, it is difficult to understand the trouble that gibbers in our minds. Moses struggled with what he thought would make his life better and make him happy, and used the now infamous five excuses [10] to avoid God’s mission for his life. This is not unique, rare, or even a minority position. It is universal—the only position held by every person who has lived, now lives, or will live. It was first seen in the first people. They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because they wanted to be like God, to know what God knows. And nothing has changed since. [11]
Only God knows us well enough to navigate our inner lives, our motives, and our actions. That is why he alone can judge us. It has always humored me that atheists and agnostics are so eager to replace God and put him on trial. The irony is that the only way to be honest with oneself is to be honest with God. Without God, there is no path to knowing enough about ourselves that could be useful.
King David, far from a perfect man, in fact a wicked man, when captivated by a naked woman, wrote a prayer for all of us that can open the door to an honest self-awareness on planet earth.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” [12]
Bill Hull
With a desperately wicked heart on the banks of Babylon
2025
[1] John 16:23-28
[2] I Timothy 2:5,
[3] Please see the ten plagues brought upon Egypt. Exodus 5-12.
[4] Quiet Time, a 20th-century invention with the good intent of setting aside time daily to spend with God. Like many good ideas, it became a legalist millstone tied around the neck of Christians. It became a sort of white magic. The saying was: “If I miss my quiet time, after one day I know it, after the second day my friends know it, and after the third day, everyone knows it.” It can serve as a primer or short boot camp that helps get into a relationship with God, interwoven into the fabric of a person’s everyday life.
[5] 2 Kings 20:1-8, Isaiah 38:1-8
[6] I honestly Love You 1998 Geffen Records
[7] Exodus 4:27
[8] Exodus 4:14-17 NLT.
[9] Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Israel, Jesus Christ
[10] 1. I am not qualified. 2. What authority do you have? 3. They won’t believe me. 4. I have a speech impediment. 5. I don’t want to go!
[11] Genesis 3:5,6.
[12] Psalm 139:23,24.
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Honestly, one of the best columns ever. Your honesty with your readers gives us courage to do the same. After all of the great debates with God are all said and done, there is only submission. It’s the only war we win by giving up. Best quote from the column:
“Without God, there is no path to knowing enough about ourselves that could be useful.” Thanks, Pastor Bill.