God can take the ordinary and turn it into something powerfully above and beyond the normal. There are several can’t miss lessons we can glean by looking at how God took a simple stick and transformed it into a tool of righteousness. In today’s blog, we take a look at some can’t miss lessons on the Rod of God.
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Lessons on the Rod of God
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 of verse 10.
- The lion, as you know, is a majestic dominion oriented animal.
- 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 one.
- Rods and staffs were part of the nomadic and agrarian cultures that predominated that era.
- But at the end of the day, a staff is no more than a plain old stick.
- That is until God got 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.
- He did that with a rod and when He did that plain old stick became something much more.
- Everything becomes much more when God gets a hold of it.
Exodus 4:2–4 (AMP) — 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,
A Stick Gets A Promotion
- 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 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 photosynthesized stick is now the rod of God.
Aaron’s Rod as the Rod of God
- Moses wasn’t the only one who carried a God-empowered stick, Aaron, his brother, had one also.
Exodus 7:10 (AMP) — 10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did as the Lord had commanded; Aaron threw down his rod before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent.
- Drop down now a few verses, and you’ll see Aaron’s rod functioning as the Rod of God again in action.
Exodus 7:19–20 (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.
- Aaron’s rod of God took on even greater significance in that it was stored in the Holy of Holies inside the ark of the Covenant.
Hebrews 9:4 (AMP) — 4 It had the golden altar of incense and the ark (chest) of the covenant, covered over with wrought gold. This [ark] contained a golden jar which held the manna and the rod of Aaron that sprouted and the [two stone] slabs of the covenant [bearing the Ten Commandments].
A Jar, a Stick and Miracles
- The jar of manna and Aaron’s rod, symbols of miraculous signs and supernatural provision, were stored in the same space with the Word of God in the form of the Ten Commandments.
- The point: miracles and God’s holy Word go together.
- What God has joined together uninformed theology should not separate.
- Dry preaching without the watering of the miraculous is foreign to the Bible.
Mark 16:20 (AMP) — 20 And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord kept working with them and confirming the message by the attesting signs and miracles that closely accompanied [it]. Amen (so be it).
- Attesting signs accompany God’s Word.
- So, it’s right symbolically for the miracle rod to be alongside the miracle Word.
- But, the rod is not only a token for miracles; it is also a symbol of authority.
The Rod of God as A Symbol of Authority
- Jesus has such a rod, and He will wield it in the last of the last days.
Revelation 12:5–6 (AMP) — 5 And she brought forth a male Child, One Who is destined to shepherd (rule) all the nations with an iron staff (scepter), and her Child was caught up to God and to His throne. 6 And the woman [herself] fled into the desert (wilderness), where she has a retreat prepared [for her] by God, in which she is to be fed and kept safe for 1,260 days (42 months; three and one-half years).
- Kings were frequently depicted with some type of rod, as seen in Isaiah fourteen.1
Isaiah 14:5 (ESV) — 5 The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers,
- So, the rod of God is both a miracle rod and a rod of divine judgment.
#S4-015: The Cleansing of the Leper: Why God Put It In The Bible for You
References:
- L. G. Herr, “Rod,” ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979–1988), 206. ↩
