A Sermon on Hebrews 11:23-28 “Counter-Cultural By Faith”
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This transcript of a Sermon on Hebrews 11:23-28 has been lightly edited for ease of reading.
Now is the time when we turn our attention toward the reading and the teaching of God’s Word. Today we are picking up where we left off in Hebrews chapter 11, and we will consider verses 23 through 28.
Just as a reminder of where, a short quick reminder of where we have come from, the author of Hebrews is writing to a group of people who are tempted to turn their back on faith, on belief in Jesus as their only hope of salvation, because they are being persecuted in some shape or form by those who still hold to the temple rituals, who still hold to the priesthood in the line of Aaron.
And the author of Hebrews has gone through from chapter 5 to chapter 10 explaining that Aaron’s priesthood pointed to Jesus, the sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed to Jesus, the tabernacle in the temple pointed to Jesus, and as Jesus has come to this earth, as he has completed the work of salvation, as he has declared it is finished, those things have passed away because what they pointed to has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We have a better priest, a better sacrifice, a better temple in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He calls them to faith at the beginning of chapter 11 and then he gives them examples of those from the Old Testament that looked forward to the time of Jesus.
Even on the incomplete revelation that they had, they looked forward to the time of Jesus and put their faith in that, rather than in the law that they had been given. He gives them to us as examples, as testimonies, as witnesses – we shall see as we get into chapter 12 – to show us that the life that is lived by faith is better than any other life. And as we have gone through Enoch, through Abel, through Noah, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, we come now to Moses and his life and the life of his parents.
So we pick up in Hebrews 11 verse 23 today.
“By faith, Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw that he was no ordinary child and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.
He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger.
He persevered because he saw him who was invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.”
Let’s pray.
To the great and holy God, you have said that we can only grow in grace and holiness as we hear your word read and proclaimed. May this proclamation of your word today be pleasing in your sight, O God, my rock and my redeemer. And may each of us be changed by the truth that we hear.
May your spirit teach us the truth that we are yours in Christ and the truth that the good news that Jesus has died and risen for sinners, that that news changes us for your glory. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
It has been said that if you, as a Christian, want to avoid the criticism and insult and rejection of the world, well, then you should just do what the world does, say what the world says, and believe what the world believes. Too often, the people of God want comfort and wealth of the world and the comfort of knowing that they belong to the God who has given the sacrifice to save them from their sins.
And I get it. We want to be liked. We want to be accepted. We want to be comfortable. We don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb in our world.
For the last several years, they’ve invited me to do the worship service at the fair at nine o’clock on Sunday morning. And there’s a point at which, as I’m walking through in a coat and in dress pants and carrying a Bible, I realize I stick out at the fairgrounds.
We don’t like to be stared at because we’re different. We don’t like to be thought less of because we are different than the world. But the gospel – being changed by the work of Jesus as it is applied to our lives by the Holy Spirit – sets us apart.
It sets us apart as holy. It sets us apart as loved as the children of God. And it sets us apart from the world.
And it reminds us that there is no middle ground. There is no fence riding when it comes to standing on the truth and the promises of God. We live in this world.
We move about this world. I am not advocating – neither is the author of Hebrews advocating for a complete retreat from the society in which we live.
But as the people of God, regardless of the consequences, we cannot believe what our culture believes, we cannot do what our culture does, and we cannot say what our culture says. We are set apart as a royal priesthood by the blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And today, we are going to see how Moses and his parents lived a life taking a stand for the truth and setting themselves apart from the world around them, doing so by faith in the promises of God.
CHOOSE LIFE
So first, in verse 23, we see this account of the lives of Moses’ parents.
“By faith, Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was no ordinary child and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”
And we’ll see how by faith Moses’ parents chose life.
In Exodus 1, we are told that the Israelites had grown from a small group of 70 that had moved to Egypt at the end of the book of Genesis to escape the famine that was over all the land, a move that was approved and ordained by God. But over the intervening 400 years, several things had happened. These 70 people had grown to be a nation of over a million people.
The pharaoh during the time of Joseph, who loved Joseph, who loved Joseph’s family because Joseph had saved the nation of [Egypt], had preserved and increased their wealth in the midst of a famine, that pharaoh passed away. And after a time, a pharaoh, a king rose up who had a different opinion of the people of Israel. He was fearful of them because they were growing to be such a large nation, and he hated them.
So he subjected them and oppressed them by making them slaves. As part of this process, another pharaoh was raised up who was even more fearful of the nation of Israel. And he had commanded the midwives of Israel to kill any baby boy that was born. They refused to do so and they were blessed by God.
Then in chapter two, we are told that pharaoh took matters into his own hands and he ordered the soldiers to go through and any male baby that was found was to be thrown into the Nile River, assuring the death of that male child. And that is the context in which we are introduced to the mother and the father of Moses.
Amram and Jochebed, father and mother of Moses, have their baby Moses. They already have a son, Aaron. They have a daughter, Miriam.
But Moses is born during this time where male babies were to be thrown into the river. And mom and dad make a decision. They decide, my baby, my son will not be thrown into the river and exposed to the elements, putting themselves and their family in danger.
The king had made a decree. We think about laws in our world. We think about Congress making laws.
And, you know, laws are there and we understand it, especially those signs with the numbers on the interstate. We understand that that’s the law. But, you know, we can shave an extra 5, 10 for my brother, 30 miles an hour over that number there as you’re heading down the interstate.
But during this time, to put yourself in direct opposition to the king by refusing to do what the king commanded, your life would have been forfeit. And not only the life of Amram and Jochebed, but Moses’s life and Aaron’s life and Miriam’s life were likely forfeit, were it to ever be discovered that they had hid a baby against the direct command of the king. And the author of Hebrews tells us that they did this by faith, faith in the promises of God.
Now, some commentators look at this and it says here in our translation, the NIV, and I believe the ESV as well, that that Moses was no ordinary child. Some of the older translations take that word and they say that Moses was a beautiful child. Whatever it was, we know that something had set Moses apart.
Some commentators look to the writings of the historian Josephus, who has an extra biblical account of God through an angel coming to Moses’ father and promising Moses’ father that Moses was going to be the one who would deliver his people from slavery. Some commentators look to the King James Version translation and say that the parents saw Moses and that he was such a beautiful child that they just couldn’t bring themselves to bring any harm to such a beautiful child.
Honestly, doesn’t every parent feel that way, though? I mean, your child is the most beautiful child ever. All of your children are the most beautiful children ever. As contradictory as that statement is.
Some commentators merely say that Amram and Jacob knew the promises to Abraham that God would bring deliverance after 400 years, and that 400 year time frame was coming quickly and they knew that there would be nobody to keep the promises for if all the male babies were destroyed.
But whatever the underlying reason, the parents of Moses had faith that God would see and protect them, and that God would protect the nation of Israel through the disobedience of the king’s edict. Putting their lives on the line, God rewarded their faith by bringing Moses into the family of Pharaoh. He was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, who then hired Moses’s mother to nurse and to educate and to raise Moses until he was of an age to take his place in the royal court of Pharaoh.
By faith, the parents of Moses violated the law of the king. One of the things I was never allowed to do was to make a decision just simply because everybody else was doing it. As I was growing up, if I made a decision, especially a bad decision, and my excuse was, well, everybody else was doing it, that didn’t fly well.
The soldiers were pressuring the Israelite women to give up their sons and it is likely, as hard as it is to say, it is likely that many of those mothers did that very thing. And yet, against the king’s edict, against the will of the people around her, around them, the parents of Moses protected Moses’s life.
There are a lot of things that our world today says is right in our lives. Sexual promiscuity is praised in our world. Disregard for human life is pursued and called a right in our culture. Our culture rejects and dehumanizes those who disagree or think differently than us.
God calls his children to make decisions that go against the prevailing wisdom of our culture. Yes, God calls us to be on the wrong side of history if that is what he calls us to do, to maintain holiness. And there is a danger in following God rather than men.
In our culture, we can be canceled, we can be rejected. But faith in the promises of God, promises to prosper us in the midst of a hostile culture, promises to give us eternal and abundant life, faith in those promises and faith in the God who makes and keeps those promises will allow us to set aside those fears of earthly rejection, of earthly consequences, and continue to follow God in the path of holiness that he has set aside for us. By faith, Moses’s parents chose to preserve the life of their child.
CHOOSE THE AFFLICTION OF A GODLY LIFE
We see in verses 24 through 28 that Moses by faith chose the affliction of a godly life. Let me say that again. Moses chose the affliction of a godly life.
Now verses 24 through 28 cover a period of time that begins after Moses is taken into Pharaoh’s court and ends at the time of the Passover. We’ll pick up at the Red Sea next week as we look at the faith of the nation of Israel, the faith of the wilderness generation.
But this period of 80 years or so since Moses leaves Egypt after murdering one of the soldiers until he is called back to take Israel out of Egypt by the will of God, that’s a period of roughly 50 years or 80 years, excuse me, and I think it’s good for us to keep a summary statement in mind as we consider that 80-year history.
Philip Hacking summarizes these five verses by saying this, he says, “Moses would grow up to be the man who chose God’s way and paid the price.”
Faith to Leave Egypt
The first choice came when Moses was 40 years of age and he chose to reject the household of Moses. Now as we saw in our reading from Acts, Moses begins to take matters into his own hands when he’s about 40 years of age.
He is a member of Pharaoh’s court. He is entitled to everything that that entails, the riches, the ease of life, the prosperity of being a member of the house of Pharaoh. And he sees one of his fellow Israelites being beaten and subjected, brutalized by an Egyptian guard.
And thinking that he is the one who is going to release Israel from their slavery in Egypt, he takes matters into his own hand and he rescues the Israelite by murdering that particular guard. This ultimately leads him within the next few days to flee Egypt and to take up life as a shepherd in Midian. The author of Hebrews casts this in the light of Moses rejecting Egypt.
And instead of pursuing life in Egypt, he brings on the life of mistreatment and disgrace. Two aspects of his choice were given here. In verse 25, he says first that Moses chose to be mistreated with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.
In verse 26, secondly, he regarded disgrace or insult for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward. Once again, Moses understood there was no middle ground.
The choice comes down to this for Moses: Either temporary earthly pleasures that lead to God’s eternal wrath and judgment OR a temporary time of suffering that leads to God’s eternal favor and life eternal in the presence of God. And those are the same options that you and I have before us. The author of [Hebrews] says…that Moses made the choice that he did because of the future that was set before him.
Was this the future of the promised land? Probably not, because Moses did not make it to the promised land. He saw it from a distance, but because of his own sin, his own anger, his own reaction to the people placing himself in the place of God, he was not allowed entry. So more than likely, the future that Moses saw before him was a future similar to what you and I long for.
God had revealed to him at some point that there was a better, a more glorious future. Much like Abraham longed for the city whose foundation was in God, he did not long for an earthly city. Moses, by faith in the promises of God to bring him a heavenly future, led him to reject the things of this world.
He rejected the sin of the palace life. He rejected the wealth of the palace life, and he took upon himself mistreatment, rejection and public insult.
Forty years after that, when he returns to actually come with God’s mantle upon himself to bring freedom from the people, for the people of Israel from Egypt, he found himself ridiculed and rejected by the Pharaoh and the Egyptian dignitaries.
He stands there and says, “God says, let my people go.” And Pharaoh says, who are you and who is your God? After murdering the Egyptian guard, Moses was even rejected by his own people, because as we read earlier, they feared that he would mediate a conflict between two Israelites the same way he mediated the conflict between the Egyptian and the Israelite. And one of them might end up dead.
When he returns, he was initially praised and welcomed by the Israelites, but they soon turned upon him as their workload increased, as they suffered because of his demands to let the people go. And if you read through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, you’ll see that for 40 years, Moses suffered the rejection, the insult, the complaints of the people of Israel. All because of the promises of God that were set before him.
Brothers and sisters, I need to be completely honest with you. If you choose to pursue a life of holiness in the power of the Holy Spirit, you choose insult and mistreatment in this world. But keeping our eyes, keeping your eyes on what awaits the children of God will lessen the fear, will lessen the hardship that comes with those threats.
We talk about Paul’s life. What was it that kept Paul going? Well, in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 7 through 18, we read this. “We have this treasure in jars of clay.”
What is the treasure that we have in jars of clay? Well, it’s all the promises that come through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Promise for the forgiveness of our past, present and future sins. Promise of the power of the Holy Spirit to help us live in the present as those who are set apart as holy.
And promises of the future, that future new kingdom where we will live in glorified bodies that no longer hurt, no longer die, no longer get sick, where God wipes away the tears from our eyes. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Now listen to this biographical sketch.
“We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”
He goes on to say on through verse 18 that he suffered all of these things. He suffered persecution. He suffered confusion and ridicule. He suffered being struck almost to the point of death, he tells us several times earlier in the book of 2 Corinthians. He suffered all of these things for the sake of living and pursuing God’s truth in his life.
And this is all in the context of those promises of God that are there in the context of the afflictions of this world being nothing compared to the future weight of glory that is ours in Christ Jesus. Just as Moses looked to a future weight of glory promised to God, you and I look forward to a future weight of glory as we walk in this world.
Faith in the face of danger
We’re also told that the faith of Moses led Moses to leave Egypt without fear of Pharaoh’s wrath.
So Moses has returned. He has said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go,” and Pharaoh has said, “Absolutely not, you’re crazy.” And God has sent 10 plagues that utterly decimated the wealth and the power of Egypt that had been raised up in the time of Joseph.
God even said in the 10th plague, “You were seeking to take my sons from me, I will take your sons from you.” Finally, Pharaoh relents and he says, “Go, leave.” And as they leave, Pharaoh gets mad.
He gets angry and he wants to take his anger out on the Israelites. He gathers his army together and he says, “Let’s take our army and wipe them out. We’re [not] going to let them go. We’re going to get rid of them completely.”
Yet Moses walks confidently out of that situation because of his faith in the promises of God. God has promised to see the nation of Israel safely to the promised land.
And so in Exodus 14, as Israel is in this area where in front of them is a sea that they cannot cross on their own. To the sides are cliffs that they cannot climb and to their back is the army of Egypt. Moses says, “Fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today.”
Faith in God’s promises not only leads us to bear up under insult and persecution, faith in God’s promises also leads us to pursue holiness in that light, in the light of persecution to do so without fear, without fear of what the world can do to us.
Faith in the face of the unknown
Lastly, Moses’ faith led him to observe the Passover meal and all that came with it, including the painting of the doorpost with blood. Brothers and sisters, sometimes that pursuit of holiness is not only going to look weird to the world, it’s going to look weird to you.
Forget everything you know for just a moment after Exodus 11. In Exodus chapter 11, God comes to Moses and he says, “I’m going to wipe out the firstborn male child of everybody in the land of Egypt.” Moses says, “Okay, that’s a little scary, but okay.”
And God said, “I’m going to tell you how the Israelites can have that judgment pass over them.” Moses says, “Okay, yeah, I’m interested in this. I want to know how my kids and the kids of my brothers and sisters and the kids of the rest of the Israelites can be safe.”
God says to him, “I say, get ready for a trip. It’s going to be after dark. It’s going to be about bedtime, but dress yourself like you’re getting ready to go on a long journey. All right. Kill a lamb, slaughter a lamb, take the blood from that lamb and paint the doorpost of your house. Cook the lamb, eat every bit of it. Don’t leave any leftovers. And after sundown and until sunrise, don’t walk outside your house.”
It’s a little odd, isn’t it? And yet we know that by faith, faith in God’s promise that he would protect the firstborn males of the Israelites, Moses and the Israelites did that.
Yes, you and I now know, because we have the benefit of Exodus 13 through Revelation 22. We now know that Jesus is that Passover lamb. He is the one who has taken the wrath of God that is due to us.
He has taken it upon himself so that he could be the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He was raised again on the third day so that we might have life, so that we might have justification. And so we can look at the institution of the Passover in the book of Exodus and we can say we know why God did that.
But for the nation of Israel in that moment, this was not normal. To paint your door with the blood of a lamb, to get dressed when it’s bedtime, like you’re going on a long trip, and to not leave your house when things get loud and weird outside. By faith in God’s promises to rescue the firstborn, Moses did what God commanded him to do.
Sometimes your obedience will seem odd and out of place, but keeping your eye on the prize, so to speak, will lead you to say yes, Lord, when he calls you to holiness, even if that holiness will lead to persecution, rejection, or to looking funny in the sight of the world.
CONCLUSION
So let’s revisit what Philip Hacking said about these verses. He said that by faith, “Moses would grow up to be the man who would choose God’s way and pay the price.”
There is a choice that lies before you, that lies before me. We can choose the favor of the world, or we can choose the favor of God. We can choose the pleasures and prosperity of this world, or we can choose the pleasures that await, the glories that await at the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
What does it look like to choose affliction for the sake of holiness, to choose to look different from the world as we pursue truth? Well, for singles, it means choosing between chastity in singleness OR sexual promiscuity. God calls us to chastity in our singleness, and so we choose to not be sexually promiscuous. For married people, it means choosing a faithful marriage OVER an open or adulterous one.
For children, it means choosing between respect and honor for our parents OVER the rebellion that our culture so prizes, so prizes.
Too many of us only choose the bounties of God for two hours throughout the week, and then we live the other 166 looking just like the world around us. By faith in the cross, God empowers us to live in light of the future promises that are given to us.
When we pursue holiness in our world, when we pursue love of enemy in the way that God and Jesus defines it, we are going to be rejected. We are going to be canceled. But the book of Revelation reminds us of something very important.
The promises that we have from Jesus for that glorious future that awaits us in the new heavens and the new earth are yes and amen in Christ Jesus, which means that the absolute worst that you can think that the world could do to you [– even if the world takes your life – the worst that the world can do is usher the child of God into the presence of your loving and glorious Father.]
Stop worrying so much about what the world around you is doing. Set your sights on the promises of God and stand on His truth regardless of what your friends are doing, regardless of what your family is saying, regardless of what the culture believes.
By faith, choose eternal reward over the transient comforts of this world.
Let’s pray.
God and Father above, the holy life in this world is hard. Sin is pleasant and pleasurable for a time, the world is going to seek to convince us that the only way to peace, the only way to happiness, the only way to joy is to pursue the pleasures that the world lays out before us. But You have set us apart from that; You have set us apart as holy through the blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that was an infinite price paid for our holiness.
And so, Lord, by the power of that blood, by the power of the Holy Spirit, empower us to live holy lives regardless of what the culture around us says. We may lose “respectability,” we may lose favor from the powerful, we may lose friends, we may become estranged from family. Lord, as long as we know that you love us, as long as we know that you have accepted us in Christ, and as long as we know the promises of the glorious future that awaits, the things of this earth grow strangely dim. So Lord, help us to live in the light of the glory of the Gospel and help us to live by faith.
Amen.
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Some of the conclusion of this sermon on Hebrews 11:23-28 was shortened due to technical difficulties with the transcription.