Moses said he couldn't speak. Isaiah said his lips were unclean. Jeremiah said he was too young. God rejected every excuse — and touched each man's mouth.
Every believer who has ever felt unqualified to speak for God has good company — three of the greatest prophets in scripture felt exactly the same way. Moses claimed he couldn't talk. Isaiah confessed his lips were filthy. Jeremiah protested that he was just a boy. And God, in each case, refused the excuse. He didn't send them to seminary first. He didn't wait until they felt ready. He touched their mouths and said, Go.
Three prophets. Three different reasons they couldn't speak. Three encounters where God dealt directly with the organ of speech. The pattern is unmistakable — and it wasn't meant only for prophets. It was meant for you.
The Boy Who Tried to Outrun His Calling
In Jeremiah 1:5-10, we meet a young man — the Hebrew and Arabic words suggest someone barely past childhood — who hears the most staggering commission imaginable. Before God even tells him what to do, He tells him what He's already done: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I ordained you a prophet to the nations."
Notice the sequence. God didn't discover Jeremiah's talent and recruit him. He designed Jeremiah for the mission before the boy drew his first breath. Your height, your temperament, your particular wiring — none of it is accidental. God reverse-engineered the prophet from the assignment. He said, "I need a prophet to the nations. So here's how I'm going to build Jeremiah" (watch at 15:30).
And Jeremiah's response? The ancient equivalent of I'm not old enough to drive. "Oh, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth."
God's reply is not gentle reassurance. It's a direct order: "Do not say I am a youth." He doesn't negotiate. He doesn't offer a training program. He says, in essence: I'm not accepting that. You go where I send you. You say what I tell you to say. And then — the detail that changes everything — "the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth."
As Pastor Wadie Marcos put it: "Your problem is your mouth? I'm gonna be with your mouth. Your mouth needs anointing. Your mouth needs a touch. I'm gonna touch you" (hear this moment).
This is the excuse of inexperience. I don't know enough theology. I haven't read enough books. I can't answer tough questions. And it's the excuse that collapses fastest under the weight of scripture. Consider the Samaritan woman in John 4. She had zero theological training. She didn't quote a single verse. She walked into town and said, "There's a man who told me all the things I've done." That was enough to bring an entire city out to meet Jesus.
It wasn't the content of her words that moved them. It was the change in her. They knew her reputation. They knew her history. And now she was different. Something had happened to this woman, and they had to find out what. As the sermon made plain: "I don't think it's what she said that did it. It's how she said it. They're like, you're different. You've changed. We're blown away by your demeanor" (watch at 17:53).
You don't need a degree to be God's voice. You need a touched mouth and a changed life.
But Jeremiah's commission also reveals something uncomfortable about the nature of the work. God listed six things He was sending the boy to do: root out, pull down, destroy, throw down, build, and plant. Six tasks. Four of them are demolition. Only two are construction. The hard work comes first. You cannot build on ground you haven't cleared. You cannot plant in soil you haven't torn up. And if a church only offers encouraging words without ever naming what needs to be rooted out, that is not a balanced gospel — any more than a church that only rebukes.
When the Veteran's Lips Go Cold
Isaiah's problem was nothing like Jeremiah's. He wasn't young and untested. He was a seasoned prophet — and he knew exactly what was wrong with him.
Isaiah 6 opens with a death: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up." That timing matters. King Uzziah had been spectacularly successful — militarily, administratively, even spiritually for a time. He was so impressive that people started watching him instead of watching God. And Uzziah started watching himself. He decided he could be priest and king both, entered the temple to burn incense, and was struck with leprosy on the spot.
Uzziah had become the thing people relied on more than God. And he had to die — literally — before Isaiah could see the Lord on His throne again. The question lands with uncomfortable force: What is your King Uzziah? What are you relying on more than God? Pastor Wadie shared his own version of this with disarming honesty. Before coming to Christ, he was deep into gangster rap — the music, the culture, the crowd. After his conversion, he put his CDs in a white shoe box in the back of his closet. He told himself he'd never listen to them again. But he kept them. And one day he felt the Lord pressing: Why are they still there?
"You know what the truth was in my heart? It's what if one day I just decide to be lukewarm or not wanna live for God — and then I got cornered. And I felt the Lord saying, 'Well, are you planning to do that?'" (watch at 43:38). He threw the box in the trash. King Uzziah died that day.
Only after Uzziah's death does Isaiah see the throne room — the seraphim with six wings, the shaking doorposts, the smoke. And what strikes him is not wonder. It's horror. "Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips."
This is not the confession of a novice who curses too much. This is a veteran prophet who has lost his way. If you read Isaiah 5, he pronounces woe after woe on everyone else. Then chapter 6 arrives, he sees God, and suddenly the finger turns inward: Woe is me. He had become cynical. Judgmental. He no longer saw God's people through God's eyes. He saw them through exhaustion and disappointment.
This happens to anyone who serves long enough. The 10% doing 90% of the work. The unanswered prayers. The people who don't change. And slowly, imperceptibly, the lips that once spoke God's words begin speaking from bitterness instead. The diagnosis is always the same: you stopped seeing Jesus. When we lose sight of Him on the throne, we lose perspective on everything else. The earth still looks chaotic. The news still looks terrifying. But He is still sitting there.
God's remedy for Isaiah was not a gentle touch. It was a live coal from the altar, carried by a seraphim — with tongs, because even a heavenly being couldn't hold it bare-handed. And that burning coal was pressed against Isaiah's mouth. "Behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged."
Repentance for the seasoned servant is not less painful than the first repentance. It may be more. But the result is the same: a clean mouth, a restored vision, and a fresh commission. "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And Isaiah — the man who moments ago was undone — stands up: Here am I. Send me.
The message God gave him afterward was brutal. Everyone you speak to will refuse to listen. Their ears will be dull, their eyes shut. For how long, Lord? Until the nation is carried into exile. That's a lifetime of apparent failure. And yet God still called it the mission. We measure success by numbers. God sometimes measures it by faithfulness. Noah preached for decades and converted no one outside his own family. Jonah delivered perhaps the laziest sermon in history — one day's walk into a three-day city, a single sentence of doom — and an entire metropolis repented. If we judge by results alone, Jonah is the greatest evangelist who ever lived and Noah is the worst. God doesn't grade on that curve.
The Man Who Was Forty Years Past His Expiration Date
Moses is the most complex case, and the most relatable. By Exodus 4:10, he has already offered God three other excuses — Who am I? (3:11), I don't know Your name (3:13), They won't believe me (4:1) — and God has answered every one. Now he plays the speech card: "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue."
Here's the irony. Acts 7:22 tells us Moses "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds." He could speak. He had been trained by the most sophisticated civilization on earth. But forty years of tending sheep in Midian had stripped all of that away. He hadn't given a speech in decades. His confidence was gone. His skills had atrophied. And according to Psalm 90 — which Moses himself wrote — a man lives to seventy, eighty if he's strong. Moses was eighty. In his own estimation, he was already past the finish line.
The first forty years of Moses' life, Egypt taught him he was everything. The second forty years, the wilderness taught him he was nothing. And in the last forty years, God taught him that God is everything. The call came at the lowest point — not the highest. That's the pattern. God doesn't recruit from strength. He recruits from emptiness.
God's answer to Moses cuts through every excuse about past failure: "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say."
But Moses pushes one more time. And this is the moment that should make every believer's blood run cold: "O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send." The text says the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.
God gave him what he insisted on. Aaron. His older brother. The man who would later build a golden calf and tell Moses, with a straight face, that the gold just sort of fell into the fire and a calf walked out. As Pastor Wadie Marcos warned: "The worst thing that God can ever do to any of us is to give us that which we insist upon" (hear this moment).
The connection to Acts 16 drives the point home. Paul picked up Timothy, gathered his team, and headed out to preach — and the Holy Spirit said no. Not there. They redirected. Arrived at the new location. Ready to speak — and the Spirit said not yet. So they waited. Paul had a vision of a Macedonian man saying, "Come help us." They crossed over to Philippi. And the first person they met was not a man at all — it was a group of women praying by a river. Then a demon-possessed girl. Then a jail cell. The Macedonian man turned out to be the jailer they wouldn't meet until after a beating and imprisonment.
God reveals the destination but hides the route. He gives you enough to take the next step — never the whole map. Because if He showed you the beating before the breakthrough, most of us would volunteer someone else. Just like Moses did.
What to Remember
- God designed you for your assignment before you were born — your limitations are not accidents but specifications for the work He has planned.
- Inexperience is not disqualifying. The Samaritan woman brought an entire city to Jesus without quoting a single verse. A changed life speaks louder than a polished argument.
- Cynicism in long-time believers is almost always a vision problem — you stopped seeing Jesus on the throne and started seeing chaos instead.
- Repentance for the veteran servant is not optional. A live coal hurts more than a gentle touch, but it produces the same result: clean lips and a fresh commission.
- The worst thing God can do is give you what you insist on instead of what He intended. Aaron was Moses' idea, not God's.
- Every believer is immortal until their assignment is complete. Before that, no one can touch you. When that time comes, God gives grace for that too.
Questions to Sit With
- Which of the three excuses is yours right now — Jeremiah's "I'm not ready," Isaiah's "I've grown bitter," or Moses' "I already failed"?
- What is the King Uzziah in your life — the good thing that has become the thing you trust more than God? What would it look like for it to die?
- If God told you your ministry would produce no visible fruit in your lifetime, would you still say "Here am I, send me"?
- When was the last time you saw Jesus — not learned about Him, not discussed Him, but actually encountered Him in worship or prayer? How long ago was that?
- Is there something you're keeping in a white shoe box in the back of your closet — not because you plan to go back to it, but because you're not ready to close that door forever?
Scripture Referenced
- Exodus 4:10-17
- Isaiah 6:1-8
- Jeremiah 1:5-10
- Genesis 3:19
- John 4
- Acts 16
- Acts 7:22
- Matthew 7:1-5
- 1 Corinthians 3
- Galatians 6:1
- Psalm 90
- John 12
This article is drawn from the sermon "How God Sanctifies our Mouths" by Pastor Wadie Marcos at Maranatha Bible Church Chicago. Watch the full sermon →
Written by
Pastor Wadie Marcos
