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. 24
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,25
choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26
He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.
Yesterday we noted that the faith of Moses first lived in his parents. We also see that Moses’ decision, his choice, was to stand with the people of God and to bear
the reproach of Christ.
That sounds odd because Jesus had not yet been born. But the promise of God has been made. The promise that God will provide, a promise that Moses couldn’t see but
that He embraced…and by embraced it is meant, believed to the bone. And to bear the reproach of the promise of God meant to stand with His people…to stand with the church!
And don’t romanticize this. The church then was just as full of holes and problems and people who were broken and messed up as the church is today. As we learn in
Acts 7, when Moses killed the Egyptian who was beating an Israelite, the Israelites didn’t fall on their faces and thank Moses…they were not thankful at all!
I have for years and years now, listened to people criticize the church, leave the church and even determine that they can live their Christian lives without the church.
And what is not to criticize?
Well, the church is full of gossips…yep. Church people don’t live what they preach. Yep. The pastor is not all that great, he is just as sinful as I am. Yep.
Think about what waits for Moses when it comes to dealing with the people of God. You know the stories! They complained, they grumbled against Moses. They
even accused Moses of the very sins that they, the people, had and were committing!
They disrespected him, they didn’t want to follow him, they accused him of thinking too highly of himself and that was all in the first two weeks of coming out of
Egypt! And yet, Moses gave up, literally, the world. He gave up riches, position, reputation…and not just over a region but due to Egypt’s prominence, over the civilized world. The text says he gave up the world’s pleasures!
Sin and the ways of the world bring pleasure…that is why we seek them. Folks say, I hate my sin…oh no you don’t. You love it, that is why you do it! It brings pleasure,
else you wouldn’t give it any notice!!! The text is clear that these pleasures are fleeting…they do not deliver what they promise, only a short and temporary euphoria that is one step away from death itself.
Moses said no to all of that and instead chose to be counted among God’s people. But the text says more than that…not just to be counted among God’s people but to
suffer with God’s people.
To be counted with, to suffer with…this group of people that have all kinds of problems and will take out the bulk of their frustrations on Moses! The church is filled
with…well…us; misfits…but we are the Lord’s misfits!
Moses believed with everything in him, that suffering for the Lord and His people was viewed as the greatest form or riches that he could know and desire. The text
says this was true because he knew what his reward would be…not in this life but in the life to come.
You remember Simon of Cyrene, the man who was forced to carry the cross of Jesus when Jesus, so badly beaten, could no longer physically do so. As a Christian, knowing
what you know about Jesus, knowing the gospel as you do, knowing that Jesus was suffering there for you; If you could go back, with all that knowledge and they asked YOU to carry Christ’s cross for Him…would you? What would you think about that?
Why, you would have carried it 100 miles, you would have carried it 10 times…and for the rest of your life you would have considered it the greatest honor that you
could ever have been given!
Worldly kings or presidents could bestow honor after honor on you, and they would pale in comparison to the honor that was yours in putting that wood on your back
and walking alongside YOUR suffering Savior.
Can you imagine the honor of having carried the cross of the Savior? Can you imagine what you would feel like, knowing who He is, to think that you came to His aid,
that you shared in his sufferings, even if you were compelled at first to do so, that you walked with him, his lonely road? And then…what must Simon’s welcome have been like in heaven? What kind of reward does our Savior, after the deepest embrace and welcome
that a man could dream of receiving? What kind of reward do you think belonged to Simon…what kind of reward would Moses enjoy? He looked forward to that…to the end…to what was in a world he could not yet see.
And yet that world was so real to him, so tangible, that when all that this world could offer was right before him, pleasures and enticements that he had grown up
with, experienced and had at his finger-tips was offered to be his inheritance…to be the definition of the rest of his life, he said no and instead sided with a bunch of sinners who had nothing and liked to do nothing as much as complain about all they did
not have!
But there is much more to the story. Moses made that choice but did he know what this meant, what was now going to be before him? Not only was God going to take Moses
away from Egypt, He was going to take him to God’s school of training.
After killing the Egyptian and finding that the Hebrew people were not all that impressed with him, God took Moses to the wilderness…God took him to prepare him, to
test him, to break him. God would convince Moses that this is not about Moses, not Moses’ plan, not Moses’ timing, not his wisdom or even his wants.
This has its effect as God’s ways always do. Moses would embrace humility, he would learn the life of the cross, the life of death to self as the pathway to life and
learn it all in God’s school of “growing up those He loves”.
Moses tried to save the people on his own but that failed and then he was taken to the wilderness and after 40 years, when God calls him and chooses him to be the
Lord’s instrument…he responds, “But I am nothing.” Ah…finally Moses you get it…now, now you are ready.
Prayer: Father, though this world be demon filled, and men prove to be easily taken in by evil, You have promised that those who trust You will ride on the high places and
be brought into the kingdom victorious. Lord help me this day, to keep my focus upon You that I might be holy and that I might be a light in the darkness, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Song: The Kingdom of God