Would you turn with me in your Bibles back to Hebrews chapter 11. Page 1008 in the pew Bibles. Hebrews chapter 11- as we continue to work our way through this chapter on faith pointing us to the object of our faith, the author and perfector of our faith, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 11. We’ll be reading from verse 23 this evening.
I was walking through the halls of the church on Wednesday night at the time when the children’s choirs were making their way from the playground to their classrooms. And as I came up alongside the four and five-year-old choir, one of the little girls looked up at me and said, “What’s your name?” I said, “My name is Wiley. What’s your name?” And she said, “Charlotte.” I said, “Oh, I like that name. That’s a really pretty name.” “It’s French,” is what she said to me! And I said, “Well, I think it means ‘strong’ or something like that.” “It means ‘brave,’” she said, and then she turned and went into her classroom! And I think she was. I think she was brave as her name means!
But that’s what our passage is about tonight. Our passage tonight is about being brave. It’s about a courageous faith; a courageous faith like the faith of Moses. And yet Moses wasn’t always courageous. In fact, there were plenty of times in Moses’ life when he was afraid. There were plenty of times in Moses’ life when it seemed like his faith was faltering. And yet in these verses, in Hebrews 11:23-28, Moses is presented to us as an example of faith. He is presented to us as an example of faith and courage. And there’s something encouraging about that, isn’t there, because it’s encouraging when it seems like our faith may falter at times. It’s encouraging because there are so many times in our own lives when we may feel more cowardly than courageous. And yet in the end, a life of faith, a life of faith in Christ with the preservation of a faithful God, it manifests itself in a life of courage.
And so we’ll look at courage, courageous faith tonight from Hebrews 11. And we’ll approach these verses along two lines. Number one, the treasures of Egypt. And then secondly, the reproach of Christ. The treasures of Egypt and the reproach of Christ. Before we read, let’s pray and ask God’s blessing on the reading and study of His Word. Let’s pray.
Father, as we come to Your Word tonight, we ask that You would give us a boldness as we approach and listen, a boldness, a confidence that You speak through Your Word and You speak to the exact situations that are going on in each of our lives, a boldness that we might know that every word is breathed out and useful for teaching and rebuke and correcting and training in righteousness. We pray that You would give us a boldness to approach Your Word tonight with an openness into our own hearts and to see the places where we are afraid and our faith seems weak and that You may strengthen us and equip us to live out a bold faith for You, wherever You call us to go. And we pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Hebrews 11, verse 23:
“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First, the treasures of Egypt. Verse 26 says, “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.” There’s a saying about the exodus, that it was easier to get Israel out of Egypt than it was to get Egypt out of Israel. That it took one night to get Israel out of Egypt but it would take much longer to get Egypt out of Israel. Because you see, the people of Israel, they wanted to go back. Even after they had seen all of the signs and wonders, even after they had been set free from slavery and they were shown over and over again the remarkable kindness and goodness of God in their lives, and even after all that, they still wanted to go back. They wanted to go back to the familiarity of Egypt. They wanted to go back to the idolatry of Egypt. They wanted to go back to the world of the Egyptians.
And we do too, in a sense. Most of the time, most of the time the fleeting pleasures of sin seem a whole lot better than being mistreated with the people of God. And so it’s tempting. It’s tempting for us. And that’s exactly the situation that was facing the church in the first century. The church that was receiving this letter of the Hebrews for the first time. The book of Hebrews was written to a people who, as we have seen before in chapter 10, they were tempted to throw away their confidence. They were tempted to shrink back and give up their distinctiveness. They were tempted, in other words, to go back to Egypt, to go back to the ways of the world from which they had been called in the Gospel.
But if there was anybody who knew what it was like to give up the treasures of Egypt, it was Moses. And Moses, he had it made. Moses had been spared Pharaoh’s extermination plan. Moses had been brought up in Pharaoh’s household as a son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He had everything he could want in terms of prosperity, of prominence, of comfort, of security. He had it all, and he gave it up. He gave it up for mistreatment. He gave it up for danger. He gave it up for a life of uncertainty and an unsettled life. Isn’t that what it is that we are afraid of when it comes down to it? Because it’s easier to blend in, it’s easier to stick with the crowd, but it’s hard to say, “No” – isn’t it? It’s hard to say “No” to ourselves. It’s hard to say “No” to what everyone else is doing. It’s scary to think about not having. It’s scary to think about not being accepted by our peers. Nobody wants to risk being left out. Nobody wants to risk being rejected. And maybe nowhere is that more so, maybe nowhere is that pain more acutely felt than when it comes to our children.
I was talking to a friend the other day about life with high schoolers. And I said something about how nothing made me question my parenting choices more than a high school homecoming Friday night. Good old HOCO with the parties and the party buses, the after parties, the party buses and all of those things. And my friend agreed, but at the same time, his child had been left out of some of those conversations and plans and said, “I hate all those things, but I think at the same time I would pay $500 right now to get my child on a party bus tonight.” You feel it. You feel the disappointment. You feel the sense of being rejected. You feel the pain of it all. And fear, it makes us compromise. It makes us want to play it safe and to keep quiet when saying something hard would be difficult. Fear makes us want to stay in Egypt, in other words.
David Wells when he was writing a few years back about the state of the evangelical church, he said, “It takes no courage to sign up as a protestant.” We could expand that and say more generally as a Christian. “It takes no courage to sign up as a protestant.” He says, “After all, millions have done so throughout the West. But to live, but to live by the truths of historic protestantism, that is an entirely different matter.” That takes courage in today’s context. In fact, he argues in his book that, he says that, “The truths of historic protestantism, the truths of historic Christianity, they are sometimes no more welcome in the evangelical church than they are in the outside culture.” It takes courage. It takes courage to live a life of faith. It takes courage to say “No” to the fleeting pleasures of sin and to give up the treasures of Egypt in order to suffer reproach with our Savior, Jesus Christ. So there’s first the treasures of Egypt.
Secondly, there’s the reproach of Christ. And what the writer of Hebrews does is he makes this connection, he’s making a connection between the course that Moses took with the humiliation of Christ Jesus. Now Moses didn’t get there without some missteps, did he? Maybe you remember from a few years ago, several years back, it was one of those presidential debate miscues that the candidate wished he could have had back. And he was being criticized for not supporting a certain bill, for not voting for it, and he said something like, “Well actually, I was for it before I was against it.” And it’s kind of one of those famous gaffes in the debates. But I think it made more sense when it was fleshed out more, but it made me think a little bit about Moses, because you see, Moses, he was against it before he was for it. He was shaky before he was steady. He was cowardly before he was courageous. And yet, in the end, he was faithful.
And I think Moses is something like that parable that Jesus told in Matthew 21, the parable of the two sons. Not the one with the prodigal but the parable of the two sons where the man instructed his two sons to go and work in the field. And one of them says, “I will go,” and then later he changed his mind and he didn’t go to work. But the other one, the other son said, “I go, sir,” and he didn’t go. One said, “I will not,” and then he went; the other one said, “I go,” and then he didn’t. “Which one of the two did the will of his father?” Jesus asks. The first one did; the one who said “No” at first, but in the end changed his mind and went and obeyed his father. That’s sort of like Moses. And Moses said “No” at first but then he went and he obeyed the call of God. But you see, what it shows us is that Moses didn’t have a fairytale faith. Moses didn’t have a Camelot courage. He had a faith and a courage with warts and all.
But I think we can identify at least four features of courageous faith in these verses about Moses. There’s conviction, there’s allegiance, there’s awe, and there’s refuge. Those four things, in some ways, make up Moses’ courage or the courage we see presented to us in these verses. Number one is conviction. Actually, it wasn’t Moses but it was his parents, wasn’t it? It was Moses’ parents’ conviction – their conviction to obey God, to honor God, to trust God, that gave them the courage to disregard the king’s edict. You remember what the king’s edict was? We read about it back in Exodus chapter 1. The king’s edict was that every son born to the Hebrews should be cast into the Nile River because the Hebrews made the Pharaoh nervous. They were becoming too many of them; so many that they might actually become a threat to Pharaoh and to his power in Egypt. And so he thought, “Let’s eliminate them by enfolding all of the female children into the broader Egyptian population,” and yet Moses’ parents were not having any of it. And first, they hid Moses for three months, and then when they couldn’t hide him any longer, they placed him in a basket of bullrushes and set him floating on the river.
Now a few things we could say about that. One is how desperate they must have been. How desperate would they have had to have been in order to release a three-month-old baby into the open water in nothing but a basket? There are not great chances of survival in that scenario. The other thing we could say about it is technically they actually kind of follow the king’s edict, didn’t they, and they cast Moses into the river; they just did so in a basket! And they did so because “they were not afraid of the king’s edict,” verse 28 says, verse 23, excuse me. The Message translation says it this way – “They saw the child’s beauty and the braved the king’s decree. They saw the child’s beauty and they braved the king’s decree.” Now a lot has been made about that beauty and what it means that Moses was a beautiful child. Now whether that was something God had revealed to them, He came to them and told them something special in store in Moses’ life – commentators will say things about how Moses’ parents, they must have had some divine revelation to rest on, which marked their baby as one whom God designed to do a great work by. That may be. And we’re not told, though. There are some ways that we could say that if nothing else, these parents did what any parent would do. And what does any parent think about their child, but that their child is beautiful and they would do anything to save them. Wouldn’t you do that?
And maybe that’s what they knew when they were thinking about God’s promise to Abraham – that one of Abraham’s offspring would come and be a blessing to the nations. But how could that be if Abraham’s offspring were eliminated? And so they had a boldness. They refused to do what the king commanded. They braved the king’s decree. They at least had a basic conviction that life is a gift from God. “Be fruitful and multiply” is the first command that we find in the Bible. And I love what the pastor, Benjamin Morgan Palmer said about the birth of his first son, about becoming a father for the first time. He said, “The birth of my first son taught me more divinity, taught me deeper theology than I had ever learned in any of my seminary courses.” It’s a stewardship and a responsibility and a holy calling. And Moses’ parents, they were not about to give that up for the sake of following some king’s wishes. And his parents, they were no political figure could bind their consciences in order for them to do or act in a way that was wrong in the sight of God.
They were like Peter and John, weren’t they? You remember Peter and John in the book of Acts when they were preaching about Christ and they worked a miracle and they were arrested and those in the council told them to no longer preach the name of Jesus. And yet they had a boldness before the authorities. They said, “We must obey God rather than men.” It was a courage, you see, that was built on conviction; a conviction that there is a right and there is a wrong. A conviction of what is true and good. And a commitment to God no matter what the king or anybody else says. And Moses’ parents, they were not afraid of the king’s edict.
We also see in these verses that courage is connected not only to a commitment to God and a conviction of His Word, but a commitment to God’s people. It’s a commitment to the church, we could say. Number two is allegiance. Moses grew up as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Pharaoh’s daughter, we are told in Exodus 2, that she drew him up out of the water and she was the one who gave him the name “Moses” because the name “Moses” means “drawn from the water.” And we’re really not told anything about his childhood in the book of Exodus. We could imagine what it was like though. We could imagine what it was like once he was sent to be raised in the household of Pharaoh’s daughter. We know something about what it was like in Egypt, don’t we?
Maybe you heard the story this past week about the opening of the grand Egyptian museum in Cairo, or maybe it was a few weeks ago. But to celebrate the occasion, the Danish foreign minister gave to the Egyptian foreign minister a great pyramid of Geza Lego set! I don’t know if you saw that, but it’s a 1,476 piece Lego set that’s made for grownups and it costs, or it sells in stores for $129.99. Actually, you have to get two in order to make the whole pyramid, so it’s a $260 Lego set. But it comes complete with two small pyramids, two mortuary temples, a Sphynx statute and an obelisk. It’s the perfect gift for the master builders in your life for Christmas perhaps!
But think about the real pyramids, the real pyramids like the one where King Tut’s tomb was. It contained gold masks, gold coffins, gold chariots, lavish oils and perfumes, priceless jewels and statues. All told, some estimate that in today’s value that the contents of Tut’s tomb would have been around $1 billion. Moses had access to all of that, all of those treasures, and yet he gave it up when he said “No.” It says in verse 24 and 25, “When he was grown up, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God.” There’s that episode in Moses’ life when he was a fully grown man and you would think that so much of his world, so much of his understanding, his appearance, his outlook, his relationships, so much of those things would have been formed, shaped by life in the royal court of Egypt. And yet when he looked on the suffering of the Hebrew people, his own people, it says that “When he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he struck down the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.” And then when it was found out, he got out of there; he fled. Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And so he went from the royal household in Egypt to being a humble shepherd in the land of Midian. Why did he do that? He did it out of an allegiance, a solidarity with the people of Israel. He gave all of it up, “choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God.”
There’s something here of an all-for-one and a one-for-all because God’s purposes, God’s plan, it is not confined to individuals or to lone rangers, but it is for a people. It is for a people connected by covenant. And that means that standing alone is never actually standing alone. It’s standing with and for the saints of God in all ages – past, present and future. I think of those lines from the book about the persecutions of the church in 17th century Scotland, Fair Sunshine. At the close of that book, it says, “No suffering could be too great to endure such a cause. For those saints, no scaffold could daunt them. Instruments of torture could not make them quail the sufferings and discomforts of cave or moor or prison cell, could not move them to act or speak against conscience. Behind and above, covenants subscribed with their hands and witnessed to by their hearts was an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and itself sealed with the blood of the mediator.” They were willing to go through whatever persecution, they were willing to be on the run and killed because the writer says, “Faith gave buoyancy to the covenanters’ resolution.” Hope was the anchor of their soul. The love of Christ shed abroad in their hearts spurred them on to do and suffer. And outside the camp, they bore His reproach. Before them ever loomed large the recompense of the ward and the gates of the city of God. And that’s a courage that few of us can imagine having, isn’t it? But it was nurtured in large part because of their allegiance to God and their allegiance to one another. It was a covenant bond that connected them to each other and allowed them to stand firm through difficult days. So conviction and allegiance.
And then there’s courage and awe. There’s awe that we see in Moses’ life. You know what was the defining event in Moses’ life. It was really the turning point for him, of who he would become. What was it? It was the burning bush. We read in Exodus chapter 3 that “The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning yet it was not consumed. And God called him out of the bush, ‘Moses! Moses! Do not come near. Take the sandals off of your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And Hebrews 11:27 says that “Moses left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.”
But here’s the thing. I mentioned it before – Moses was afraid. He was afraid when it was known that he had killed and hidden the Egyptian. He fled from Egypt because Pharaoh sought to kill him. And when God called Moses to go back to Egypt, he did not want to go. At least three times he said, “I can’t do it. If there’s someone else, please send them.” In fact, there was a book about missions that was written many years ago. It had a great title about the difficulty of the call to missions. The title was, “Here am I, send Aaron.” And that was Moses, because it seemed too big for him. It seemed like he could not do it. And yet ultimately Moses did go. Moses did stand before Pharaoh. Moses did lead the people out of Egypt because – how could he do that? It was because he feared God more than he feared the king. And Moses, when he had led the people out of Egypt, he led them in a song. This is what his song had in there. “The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. Who is like You, O Lord, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds. The Lord, the Lord will reign forever and ever.”
See, the source of their victory, the source of their salvation, it was the awesome power of God. And it was, as someone has said, “a case in which a right fear of God puts all other fears in their place.” You see, this awe of falling before the consuming glory of God, the terror of looking on the one who is invisible, it allowed Moses to confront whatever lesser power stood in his way, whatever lesser terror that could be found with the Pharaoh. It’s like what we sing in Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” – “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure. One little Word shall fell him.” I’ve heard a preacher say before that we have never truly stood before God, if we’ve never stood before God and been afraid, then we’ve never truly stood before God. And the writer of Hebrews says it this way – “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” And yet, and yet that fear, that awe of God, it puts all other fears in their place so that we can face whatever is in front of us with courage and boldness.
And then lastly, refuge. We’ve seen Moses’ parents held to their conviction in defiance to the king’s decree. “By faith, Moses chose allegiance to the people of God rather than the pleasures of Egypt. By faith and with awe, he led the people out of Egypt.” And then we see in verse 28, “By faith, he kept the Passover,” it says, “so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.” In other words, Moses casts himself, he casts his security upon the grace and the mercy of God. You see, he rested in God as his refuge in the face of what was truly his greatest danger – the Passover, the Passover and the sprinkling of blood. And there are so many connections that we could make between the Passover and what Jesus came to do. But for Moses, it was the blood of the lamb spread on the doorposts, wasn’t it? And the meal of unleavened bread and bitter herbs, it was their belts fastened on their way, sandals on their feet. They were ready to go with staffs in their hands, we’re told in Exodus 12, “It is the Lord’s passover, and when I see the blood I will pass over you and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” And the lamb, you see, the lamb was killed in place of the firstborn son. They would be spared the wrath of God. They would be set free because they kept the Passover and the sprinkled blood.
And what do we find when we come into the New Testament? When John the Baptist sees Jesus coming to enter into His ministry, He says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And Jesus, that is, at the Passover meal, celebrated with His disciples, “This is my body given for you. This cup poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Jesus it he Passover Lamb. Jesus is the sprinkled blood, a better blood. And just as the Passover spared the people of Israel from the destroyer of the firstborn son, so also Jesus is the refuge and salvation for all those who trust in Him. And ultimately, ultimately nothing can touch those whose rest is in the shed blood and the finished work of Jesus.
And so we can have a confidence. Let us have a confidence. Let us have a boldness, a courage to approach the throne of grace to find help in times of need. Let us have a boldness and a courage to stand firm for the sake of Christ. We can have a courage to endure through whatever suffering you may be going through to persevere through mistreatment, to do hard things, say hard things for Christ. We can have a courage to say “No” to moral and spiritual compromise, to say “No” to temptation. The courage to love our neighbor, to love our neighbor with the Gospel especially. And to love even those who seem to be more against us and most difficult to love because a faith in Christ, a faith in Christ that is made up of conviction, allegiance, awe and the refuge of God’s mercy and grace, it is a faith that is courageous.
And that’s what the writer of Hebrews is presenting for us in these verses. You know, it’s been said that the number one command, the number one instruction that we find all throughout the Bible is, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear.” And we need that, don’t we, because we are so oftentimes prone to be afraid and so often prone to fear. “Do not be afraid. Do not fear. Be bold and courageous.” And you know, as we trace the life of Moses, we trace the story of Moses all through Exodus and all through the end of Deuteronomy, we find right there at the end of Deuteronomy and towards the beginning of Joshua, there is this hinge and this transition of leadership, and there is a declutter almost of verses that as the leadership is passing from Moses to Joshua, what is the refrain? What do you read over and over again? “Do not be afraid. Do not fear. Be bold and courageous. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.” Go forth in that same courage. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we praise You for this account from the life of Moses and these verses about a life of faith. And so we pray as we go up from here this evening that You would strengthen our faith by Your Word, that Your Spirit would do that work in our lives, that Your Word would not return void but that it would accomplish the purpose for which You sent it. That we would run our races with endurance, looking to Christ, and that You would receive all the glory for it. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.