Show Notes
Hebrews 11:23-28
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Father, we ask this evening that you would open our hearts and minds to your word.
[00:00:06] For we confess that your word is perfectly clear in all that it teaches, all that is necessary for our salvation, all that is necessary for us to live a godly life here and now.
[00:00:21] And yet, Father, we recognize that our hearts, our minds have been corrupted by sin.
[00:00:30] Your word is perfect.
[00:00:32] And so we ask that your holy Spirit would be working in us to illuminate and understand the word that your spirit has given to us.
[00:00:48] So, Father, bless us in the reading, the hearing, and the preaching of your word. In Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:02] Hebrews, chapter eleven.
[00:01:12] I've been going through this chapter very slowly, as you've noticed.
[00:01:17] I've been two months on this, and I haven't dealt with the entire chapter eleven, verses 23 through 28.
[00:01:49] 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.
[00:02:04] 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.
[00:02:20] He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.
[00:02:28] For he was looking to the reward by faith when he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as one seeing him who is invisible.
[00:02:47] By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.
[00:03:00] Please be seated.
[00:03:08] It has fascinated me when the writer to the Hebrews chose things from the lives of these saints.
[00:03:22] He didn't necessarily choose the things that were the first things to come to our minds.
[00:03:29] Now, when we think of Moses, we certainly think of the account there that we read in Exodus of his deliverance as a baby from Pharaoh. I didn't read the part about the threat that was against God's people, that the pharaoh was out to destroy the children of Israel, particularly all the males that were born to them there in Egypt.
[00:03:58] And Moses was delivered from that.
[00:04:07] And the writer to the Hebrews does not deal with the burning bush, does he?
[00:04:14] And yet that was a very critical moment in Moses life.
[00:04:20] He had a fascinating life. I haven't yet reached 80 years old, but Moses spent 40 years in a privileged position in Egypt as an egyptian prince.
[00:04:35] And then he spent 40 years herding sheep out in the middle of the Sinai desert.
[00:04:45] And sometimes I wonder what was going through his mind as he was out there with those sheep. And thinking, where will I end up?
[00:05:02] And then God sends him back to deliver his people from Egypt, and he's going to spend another 40 years in that desert. And this time, instead of sheep dealing with people, one thing that sheep don't do, that people do is complain.
[00:05:31] Now, they may make noises.
[00:05:34] I have a pet cat. And I guess she complains in a way about food not being there on time and things like that. But the people that Moses led out were not easy to deal with.
[00:05:55] When the writer here to the Hebrews chooses things to illustrate Moses faith, it is interesting what he chooses.
[00:06:12] I'd like you to turn with me over to acts chapter seven, because Stephen deals with some of these things as well in Moses life. Here in acts chapter seven.
[00:06:31] Acts, chapter seven. And beginning with verse 17.
[00:06:39] But as the time of the promise drew near which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph. He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants so that they would not be kept alive.
[00:07:00] At this time, Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God's sight. And he was brought up for three months in his father's house.
[00:07:11] When he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.
[00:07:28] When he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand. But they did not understand.
[00:07:50] And on the following day, he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other? But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? At this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
[00:08:21] Now, when 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness in Sinai, in the flame of fire in a bush.
[00:08:30] When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. And as he drew near to look, there came the voice of the Lord. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. And Moses trembled and did not dare look.
[00:08:47] Then the Lord said, to him, take off the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have certainly seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. And I have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt.
[00:09:08] This Moses whom they rejected, saying, who made you a ruler and a judge. This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
[00:09:22] This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for 40 years.
[00:09:34] This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me, from your brothers.
[00:09:55] The writer to the Hebrews tells us there that Moses, by faith when he was born.
[00:10:11] All the other examples of someone exercising faith, they're not infants.
[00:10:17] This is the infant Moses.
[00:10:22] How was Moses when he was born?
[00:10:27] By faith, hidden for three months by his know, this says something about covenant blessings.
[00:10:41] I would be false to tell you that if your parents are believers, that you've got it made, that it's automatic.
[00:10:51] Because I know better than that. I know better than that from the scriptures. I know better than that from my own personal experience.
[00:10:58] I have seen children grow up in the home of a believer and not come to faith in Christ.
[00:11:05] But I've also seen many instances where they did.
[00:11:10] And the faith of Moses'parents. Made a difference for him.
[00:11:17] And Moses came to that same faith, trusting in God, believing that God was at work.
[00:11:37] That was Moses'parents.
[00:11:40] And so it was by faith that he was hidden there.
[00:11:50] And when he was discovered, he was taken in by Pharaoh's daughter, and he became a prince in Egypt.
[00:12:07] Now, I've heard several theories about Moses and what his status was there in the court.
[00:12:15] I heard someone say one time that the person who became pharaoh was whatever man, married the last pharaoh's eldest daughter.
[00:12:28] And they said that was one of the reasons why the Egyptians, and this is a fact that many of the pharaohs were marrying their half sisters.
[00:12:40] Well, then I heard that that wasn't the case, that it was the son of the pharaoh that became pharaoh.
[00:12:49] And the argument seemed pretty solid until I found out, digging a little deeper, that in the records, there are many sons of pharaohs, even eldest sons, who never became the pharaoh.
[00:13:09] Often that was the case, but not always who chose the pharaoh in Egypt, it was a group that was called the ten of Upper Egypt and the ten of Lower Egypt.
[00:13:30] So there were 20 of them altogether. It.
[00:13:34] And they had some kind of inside tract in the society. And they were the ones who sat and decided if one of the sons of Pharaoh was going to be pharaoh or who was going to be pharaoh. And they would choose from among the princes, and the princes were those who were educated.
[00:13:58] And their goal was to choose someone who was intelligent and responsible.
[00:14:05] And when I came to see that, I came to see that Moses was in a very high position there in Egypt, being called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, even if he wasn't biologically related to her, that wasn't the relevant issue.
[00:14:28] And that he had been educated in all of the things that were taught in Egypt.
[00:14:37] Moses was a brilliant man with a PhD, I guess, by today's standards, maybe a couple of them.
[00:14:48] He would have known about the sciences of that day.
[00:14:53] There were a lot of things he would have known about. I even discovered by studying an issue that Moses knew about the 24 hours day.
[00:15:04] Do you realize that the Egyptians were the ones who came up with the 24 hours day, dividing the day that way?
[00:15:14] And that was a long time before Moses appeared on the scene.
[00:15:24] So he would have been taught about those things.
[00:15:28] He was taught many things, and he was in a favored position.
[00:15:37] And when we look at that, his choosing by faith to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
[00:15:51] It may seem like when we read the account there in Exodus, that he didn't choose, that this happened to him, it.
[00:16:05] But the man did make a choice in the face of that, he was identifying with the hebrew people he didn't have to do. That's.
[00:16:27] And we're told in Stephen's sermon that he gives that he, when he met that angel in the burning bush, that he is the one who received the call from God, and he is the one who told the children of Israel, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.
[00:17:09] And that prophet is Jesus Christ.
[00:17:14] It's not wrong to call Jesus a prophet. We don't often apply that term to him, do we?
[00:17:21] Because there are false teachers that that's all they see him as. He was a prophet. He was a great prophet, he's a great rabbi.
[00:17:32] But Jesus comes fulfilling that role of the greater Moses, the one who would not simply deliver his people physically from bondage in Egypt into a promised land where they would be blessed by God, but the one who would himself pay the price for the entrance of all who have faith in him.
[00:18:12] And, you know, that includes Moses.
[00:18:16] One of the amazing things about Moses is one of the stories. If you think about it, was that he struck that rock when he was told to speak to the rock. And what was the consequence of that?
[00:18:28] God told him, you're not going to be allowed to physically enter into the land.
[00:18:35] And so he was able to view the promised land from that mountain. And God buried him on that mountain.
[00:18:44] And I often thought, how sad that is, that he came all that way with those people in the wilderness, and he wasn't able to go over Jordan into that land.
[00:18:58] And yet, in the New Testament, we're told that at the transfiguration, there is Jesus standing there, and guess who's in the promised land?
[00:19:13] Until I read that and realized the implication of that, I would have thought Moses never made it into the promised land. Yes, he did.
[00:19:23] He made it into that land. And how did he make it there?
[00:19:29] By faith.
[00:19:32] By faith in Jesus Christ. The reason that Moses could stand there in the promised land is he was with Jesus.
[00:19:43] And the reason that one day we will stand in resurrected bodies in the very presence of God is because of Jesus.
[00:20:06] And then the final by faith. Here in our passage, we're told that by faith, he left Egypt not fearing the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.
[00:20:29] By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.
[00:20:42] This morning, we celebrated the Lord's supper.
[00:20:46] And the Lord's supper came to us on that night that Jesus was betrayed. And he was with his disciples, celebrating the Passover for the last time.
[00:21:14] It and we celebrate in the Lord's Supper a sacrifice far greater than the one that they made to spare their firstborn.
[00:21:40] The blood of Jesus Christ does not simply mean that we don't face the consequences of those who refuse that first Passover and their firstborn was killed.
[00:22:00] But it means for us that we have an everlasting, eternal entrance into heaven itself.
[00:22:20] Moses was looking for that greater prophet that had been promised.
[00:22:27] Moses was looking for the one that was foreshadowed in that lamb of the Passover.
[00:22:39] And you notice in the instructions about the Passover that I read from Exodus, just an interesting aside point, that the Passover lamb, the bones of the Passover lamb were not to be broken.
[00:22:59] And Jesus'bones on that cross were not broken, showing him to be that perfect lamb, the lamb of God.
[00:23:13] The one in whom Moses'parents put their faith, the one in whom Moses put his faith. Though we went through very many difficult situations, and the one that we, too, can trust, all the treasure that we have in God's word that very clear picture that we have of Jesus Christ.
[00:23:50] This is referred to as Holy week. I know. And in reform circles, we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord every week.
[00:23:59] Every first day of the week, we celebrate it. And yet, in the church calendar, we come upon a time where people are talking about that and the significance of it, and the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on that palm Sunday, and then that last supper, and then his suffering and death upon the cross, and then his glorious resurrection from the dead.
[00:24:41] That's our Passover.
[00:24:46] That's the hope that Moses was looking to.
[00:24:54] And one day, if you put your faith and trust in Jesus and him alone and what he's accomplished, we'll be there at that great wedding feast of the lamb, and we'll sit down at the table with Abraham and Jacob and Isaac and Moses, all the saints of the Old Testament, as well as all the saints of the New Testament, and will have that perfect peace that will never be disturbed because we've trusted in him.
[00:26:06] Let's look to God in prayer.
[00:26:17] Father, it is so wonderful to realize that those saints under the old covenant, who did not have the full picture of Christ received by faith and by the work of your spirit, that looking forward to the messiah that was to come, the redeemer, the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head.
[00:27:01] Father, as we look upon these things and consider the faith of Moses'parents, may we be faithful in our relationship with our own children, whether they be small or whether they be grown, that we would be faithful in praying for and looking for you to be at work in their lives, as you sovereignly choose those that are to be yours.
[00:27:38] A choice that you have made from all eternity, a choice that cannot be revoked by any man's will.
[00:27:51] Father, help us to be faithful in sharing that good news, that message that the world today truly needs to hear, that Jesus is the messiah, that he is king, that he is lord of all, and that he is our great shepherd.
[00:28:23] In his name we pray. Amen.
