THE ROD-SERPENT. THE LEPROUS HAND.
Here is another great principle in a small subject, “The Lord said, What is that in thine hand? And [Moses] said, A rod.” Jehovah then empowers him to perform prodigious wonders with his rod—to create and destroy life, to blacken the heavens, to break the vast power of Egypt, to divide the sea—eventually in the deliverance of Israel. (Of course the Talmudists, with that airy inventiveness so characteristic, which spurns such vulgar aids as facts and proof, say that this was the rod which Adam had in paradise, which descended to Seth, Jacob, and so forth. But that is just the common tendency to transfer the virtue to the instrument in order to take the glory of it away from God.) The reader may rest assured that the rod was in itself nothing but a piece of common dead wood; and the principle is this: That while men are apt to think, How much would I do if I had only such and such instruments, God is saving, “What is that in thine hand? Do it with that.” “With that! why 'tis only a bit of stick. Ah, if it were a scepter—or even a crosier; but it is only a crook.” Yet knowest thou not, O man, that thou canst do greater wonders with that bit of common stick, if God send thee, than thou couldest otherwise with scepter or crosier, though it were the scepter of Charlemagne, or the crosier of Gregory?
For Moses shall break the iron scepter of Thothmes with a stick; Shamgar shall slay the Philistines with an ox-goad; Joel shall destroy great Sisera with a bit of iron; Judith slay Holifernes, or Ehud smite Eglon, with a bit of steel; David and the woman of Thebez shall deliver Israel with a stone; Gideon rout the Midianites with a few candles and pitchers; Samson overthrow Israel's enemies with a bone. There is not such glory in doing great things with great means: there is in doing great things with small means. If Columbus had gone exploring in the Alert or Challenge, 'twer no wonder that he found a new world; but he went trusting in God, and did it with three open boats and a few mutinous men.
But the whole passage here is very comprehensive and important. Moses says that the people will not believe him; therefore Jehovah gives him two signs to prove the truth of his mission: and these signs are, in one form or another, the outward evidences that should accompany any one at any time who claims to speak for God to men—
FIRST CREDENTIAL.—The rod is always the emblem of authority, whether it be the king's scepter, the bishop's crosier, the field marshal's staff, the musician's baton, the magician's wand, or the shepherd's crook: and the authority of man—that talisman by which he has power and rule over other creatures—it is his intellect. Sir J. Herschel draws an extraordinary picture of what man's condition would be without this faculty; having no natural means of defense (much less of offense), helpless, driven before the elements, and devoured by beasts. Now what has taken place is, that this faculty of man, having fallen to the ground, has become “earthly, sensual, and devilish” —a serpent of a fearful and deadly power in the earth, though not without its own kind of attraction (there is a sort of beauty in that into which Moses' road is changed); and occasionally innocent too: many serpents are not poisonous. That this degradation and perversion of the human intellect has taken place, let all history attest. The most frightful evils to man and beast in the world have ever been caused by human skill in devising oppression and torture. As if the ordinary ills of life were not sufficient, the fallen intellect invents such playthings as the rack, Baiser de la Vierge, and a thousand other forms of hideous cruelty.
Therefore the first sign is that a man shall, in obedience to and faith in God's word, stretch out his hand and reclaim this rod; and when thus retaken it is changed from something malign and dangerous into an instrument of valuable service. The intellect of man is raised from its prone condition; and is no longer earthly, sensual, and devilish, but informed by that wisdom from above—consecrated to the service of God and the welfare of men. What miracle could be greater than change of a Saul into a Paul, or to turn the intelligence of a John Newton from managing a slave-ship to composing, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds?”
SECOND CREDENTIAL.—Then the hand withdrawn from the bosom is leprous— “Out of the heart are the issues of life “: not out of the head; nor merely by outward contact. That is to say, The evil uncleanliness of a man's outward actions (hand) originates in the “heart,” or that side of the mind which includes the Will and the Affections—the emotional side, as contrasted with the intellectual side. Hence “the fool says in his heart, There is no God:” for there is no fool great enough to say it in his head—i.e., by intellectual process. The Indian Chief Teedyascung was never trained in metaphysics; but he rapidly came to follow this “trail,” when the pale-face missionary told him that the Great Spirit required His servants to forgive their enemies. “That cannot be,” said the warrior, looking out at the long row of scalps that hung at the door of his wigwam. “That is so,” said the missionary, “And His own Son, dying on the cross, prayed that His murderers might be forgiven. To which the Chief rejoined, “Before that could be, a man must have a new heart.” Which statement contains a fund of sound theology. Now Moses is commanded to put his hand again into his bosom; but when it is drawn forth, it is found to be cured and cleansed. God has dealt with the hidden fountain of life and now the outward actions of life are sound and pure.
The first sign deals with what is popularly called the “head,” the second with the “heart “; and these accompany every divine message, and constitute out-ward proofs of its origin. In the opening nine chapters of his Evidences of Christianity, Paley works out with overwhelming power that witness which is given by the changed lives of (especially the earliest) Christians; how those who had previously lived selfish lives contaminated with all the foulness of the classic idolatry, now voluntarily passed their days in “labors, dangers, and sufferings,” solely because of the divine message which they had received. Paul catalogs a list of the vilest criminals conceivable to the Greek Christians, and adds, “Such were some of you; but ye are washed......your body is [a] temple of the Holy Ghost......Glorify God in your body.” How shocked. Augustine is in his Confessions with his old life at Carthage; how distressed is Bunyan in his Grace Abounding with his old sins; and how great a testimony to Carthage and to Bedford there was, when the grace of God transformed those powerful intellects, and fervent spirits, into agents of His own service for the welfare of His people!
This kind of evidence is continuous and omnipresent; therefore God says, “If they will not believe these two signs, neither hearken to thy voice, thou shalt take of the water of the river and pour it upon dry land, and the water shall become blood.” That which is the appointed means of life and purity—the water—becomes to the rejector the appalling symbol of death and judgment. “There remaineth but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries.”