was to fill
out the check; when he wanted bread, all he had to do was to fill
out the check and the bread came; he had a rich banker. God had
taken him into partnership with Himself. God had made him His heir,
and all he had to do was to look up to Him, and he got all he
wanted.

And yet he seemed to draw back, and began to make another excuse,
and said:

"They will not believe me."

He was afraid of the Israelites as well as of Pharaoh: he knew how
hard it is to get even your friends to believe in you.

Now, if God has sent you and me with a message it is not for us to
say whether others will believe it or not. _We_ cannot make men
believe. If I have been sent by God to make men believe, He will
give me power to make them believe. Jesus Christ didn't have that
power; it is the work of the Holy Ghost; we cannot persuade men and
overcome skepticism and infidelity unless we are baptised with the
Holy Ghost and with power.

God told Moses that they _would_ believe him, that he would succeed,
and bring the children of Israel out of bondage. But Moses seemed to
distrust even the God who had spoken to him.

Then the Lord said, "What is that in thy hand?"

He had a rod or staff, a sort of shepherd's crook, which he had cut
haphazard when he had wanted something that would serve him in the
desert.

"It is only a rod."

"With that you shall deliver the children of Israel; with that rod
you shall make Israel believe that I am with you."

When God Almighty linked Himself to that rod, it was worth more than
all the armies the world had ever seen. Look and see how that rod
did its work. It brought up the plagues of flies, and the thunder
storm, and turned the water into blood. It was not Moses, however,
nor Moses' rod that did the work, but it was the God of the rod, the
God of Moses. As long as God was with him, he could not fail.

Sometimes it looks as if God's servants fail. When Herod beheaded
John the Baptist, it looked as if John's mission was a failure. But
was it? The voice that rang through the valley of the Jordan rings
through the whole world to-day. You can hear its echo upon the
mountains and the valleys yet, "I must decrease, but He must
increase." He held up Jesus Christ and introduced Him to the world,
and Herod had not power to behead him until his life work had been
accomplished. Stephen never preached but one sermon that we know of,
and that was before the Sanhedrim; but how that sermon has been
p