FAITH’S HALL OF FAME
Part 4
”The Faith of Moses”
Hebrews 11:24-29 “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose instead to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He esteemed the reproach of Christ of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.”
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These passages tell us about how Moses’s faith enabled him to make some key decisions that set the trajectory for the rest of his life.
We’re going to see today that by faith Moses:
REFUSED something—the lure of the world
To CHOOSE something—the call of God
Now, the heroes of the faith we’ve looked at so far in this series are men that by faith made wise choices.
By faith:
ABEL chose the right sacrifice while his brother Cain didn’t—Abel was blessed, and Cain was cursed.
ENOCH chose to walk with God and God miraculously caught him up to heaven as a reward!
NOAH chose to obey God while the rest of his generation ignored God and perished in the flood.
ABRAHAM chose to live a life of faith and became the father of a nation.
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And today we’re going to see that MOSES made several key, defining moment choices.
I want to boil them down to two:
First, by faith:
I. Moses REFUSED the wrong road in life
“It was by faith that Moses, when he grew up, refused to be treated as the grandson of the king…”
You likely know his story:
The Bible says when Moses was a baby, Pharaoh’s daughter had rescued him from the Nile river—known for its hungry crocodiles!
His Hebrew mother had placed him there in a little basket to save his life from Pharaoh’s command to kill all the male babies born to Hebrew women.
Once rescued, Pharaoh’s daughter needed someone to nurse him.
God providentially worked it out that his very own mother was chosen to nurse and raise him!
Now, I believe that Moses was likely with his mother until he was around 11 or 12, for the Bible says that while he was with her:
“The child grew…”—Exodus 2:10
The NIV says, “When the child grew older,”
NLT “Later, when the boy (not baby) was older he was given back to Pharaoh’s daughter,”
These words place him far beyond infancy.
And this was God’s providence at work, for Moses’s mother no doubt took full advantage of this golden opportunity to teach him about the history of his people—the Jews.
She informed him of God’s promise to Abraham, that through his descendants “all the people of the earth would be blessed,”
And that they would inherit Canaan, the Promised Land.
He learned the history of Joseph, that Joseph had died in hope of God’s people occupying the Promised Land.
He was told of God’s promise to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt.
And here’s a big one—he learned that God had promised to send a deliverer for Israel, a Messiah!_______________
Then jumping forward to the Book of Acts, Stephen preached in his final sermon in Acts 7 that once Moses was given back to Pharaoh’s daughter he underwent a very different kind of training:
Acts 7:22 “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds.”
So after being trained by his mother in the things of God, he then became trained in Egyptian thinking.
But we see that it was the godly training from his mother that prevailed in the end!
Because it says, “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.”—Heb. 11:24
The bible says that when he made this decision he was 40 years old and it set the compass for the rest of his life.
What this means is, Moses refused the honor of being an Egyptian prince.
He turned down the vast riches,
fame,
comfort,
and power that could have all been his.
I suspect that by now he knew God had called him.
Somewhere along the line, God had revealed to him that, as a Hebrew man, he was in the position he was in by Divine Providence, not by accident.
Deep down he had begun to sense that he was God’s choice to deliver Israel from Egyptian bondage.
So Moses refused the world’s call for God’s call!
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What do we learn here for our own Christian walk?
That our walk with Jesus will likewise require us to REFUSE the world’s lure in order to PURSUE God’s call!
Jesus taught the very same thing:
Matt 16:24 “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him DENY himself and TAKE UP his cross and follow me.”
Notice, you must LAY DOWN your own desires in order to PICK UP the pursuit of Him!
ILLUS: the retriever Honey Bee.
As followers of His, we must like refuse the fleshly enticements of the world just like Honey Bee did, and just like Moses did!
The Apostle John writes, “Don’t love this evil world or the things in it. If you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.”
John assures us that what you get in this world you won’t even be able to keep, because:
“The world is passing away, and all the things that people want in the world are passing away. But whoever does what God wants will live forever.”—1 John 2:15-17
Moses could have had the very best the world had to give, but would have lost his eternal purpose and soul in the trade!
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So REFUSING the wrong road freed him up to:
II. CHOOSE the right road
11:25, “…choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, 26 esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.”
Here’s an amazing fact:
Remember, there was no Bible yet!
It would be Moses himself that would later pen the opening words of the first five books of Scripture,
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.”—Gen. 1:1
He would also write the history of what God had promised in the Garden following the fall of Adam and Eve:
Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity (open hostility) Between you and the woman, And between your seed (offspring) and her Seed; He shall [fatally] bruise your head, and you shall [only] bruise His heel.”
But before he wrote it, the word of this great promise of a coming Redeemer was passed on by word of mouth through the Hebrew people!
And Moses had heard it!
He’d also heard of God’s promise to Abraham that, through his descendants, all the nations of the world would be blessed thru the Redeemer that would come through them.
So this fragmentary information was enough for Moses to CHOOSE to live for the Christ that was to come—and to identify with the suffering of God’s people!
He sized up the treasures of Egypt against the riches of following Christ and decided they couldn’t compare!
No sin was worth it—Sowing time would never be worth the reaping time.
The heyday would never be worth the payday.
Knowing that the pleasures of sin were fleeting, and living for Christ brought eternal rewards, by faith he chose the right road!