23 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.
24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be
known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with
the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 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. 27 By faith he left
Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is
invisible. 28 By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, so
that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.
29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on
dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.
30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army
had marched around them for seven days.
31 By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed
the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.
Dig Deeper
The other day I came across a scene that has become
increasingly common in our world today.
I was in a store shopping and was surrounded by seemingly normal people
that were quite busy going about their business and filling up their carts with
the items that they needed to take home with them. It was all rather quiet, mundane, and had a
certain rhythm to it until suddenly someone started walking up behind me. They were talking in a rather loud and
animated fashion. As they passed by on
my left I realized that they seemed to be in a rather heated conversation, or
at least a very emotional one. But to my
surprise, they had no phone that I could see and no one was close to them
except for me. After my initial moment
of being startled I looked at them, thinking perhaps they were somehow agitated
and speaking to me. They glanced at me
and continued talking but then walked past, still speaking and carrying
on. A moment later I saw them again,
standing in an aisle, talking in a very animated way that involved their whole
body. I began to wonder if I wasn’t
witnessing the mental breakdown of some poor individual here. As I walked by they continued to talk but
this time turned their body so I could suddenly see the side of them that had
been obscured from my vision as they walked by me the first time. That is when I noticed an extremely small
bluetooth-type device in their ear. Now
it all made sense. What I could not see
or hear was that they were having a phone conversation with someone else.
It’s amazing how quickly people can look strange and
even crazy when they can hear or see something that you cannot. It changes their environment and context so
that what they experience is entirely different than what those around them are
experiencing and suddenly behavior that is quite rational when considered in full
context, seems quite irrational. That’s
a bit of how it is when we live by faith.
Although we cannot see the promises and future of God with our physical
eyes, we see them with our spiritual minds and we believe them. This causes us to live in a very different
reality and context than those around us.
Which, of course, makes those that truly live by faith look to the world
around us like perhaps we have caught a case of the crazies. Living by faith on the promises of God
radically changes what we fear, what we value, what we go after in life, and
what we desire. It is though we see
something that others cannot and it seems quite nuts from the perspective of
others. And that’s the truth of faith. If your life doesn’t look a bit odd,
bordering on the insane to those that don’t live by faith then perhaps it’s not
faith by which you are living.
As Hebrews continues to gives examples of those that
lived by radical faith in God despite appearances and the circumstances around
them, he comes to the time of Moses and Joshua when those that were living by
faith definitely acted in ways that seem crazy from a worldly perspective. They were living as though they could see
something that no one else could, because, in fact, they could in a sense.
The first example from this section is that of Moses’
parents. It might not seem like a great
act of faith to keep your child from harm but it must have been because they
were apparently the only people that had the courage to even try it. Imagine how intimidated parents must have
been to not be willing to fight back or try to stop their infants from being
slaughtered. Yet, the Pharaoh of the
time must have made enough threats, and been willing to carry them out, so that
the parents saw the consequences of trying to keep their children alive as
worse than letting them be killed.
Moses’ parents were somehow different.
We are not told how, but they knew that Moses was different. God had plans for him and they saw that. That caused them to be willing to risk the
dire consequences of going against the mighty Pharaoh. It led them to not be afraid of what everyone
else lived in mortal fear of.
Their faith passed on to their son even though he grew
up in the Pharaoh’s household. He was
trained up in the best of Egyptian schools and had a life of ease and comfort
ahead of him. It is likely that he was
already a fairly well known royal and may have even been somewhat of an
Egyptian military hero. Not many people
in their right mind would pass up the fame, fortune, power, and ease that was
available to the son of Pharaoh’s daughter in the most powerful and wealthy
country in the world at the time. He
could have had everything and yet he walked away. Why would he do such a seemingly crazy
thing? Due to his faith in God he could
see things that those around him could not.
It surely made Moses look crazy, but was he?
Because of his faith, Moses made three incredible
decisions that are outlined here in chapter 11.
By faith, Moses decided to turn down the trappings of the world. He had a choice between being known as the
son of Pharaoh’s daughter, a respected member of the royal “great house,” or to
be numbered among the lowly Hebrew slaves and servants that were looked down
upon by the Egyptian society. Who would
choose the reviled and humbled rather than the high and mighty? Someone with faith in God’s promises. Although Moses was raised and educated in
Pharaoh’s house, God had also worked so that his birth mother was his nanny. She obviously taught him of the great and
mighty promises of God for his people and the world and Moses chose to
demonstrate faith in those promises over and against the best that the world
had to offer. He could have argued that
he could do much more for his people by staying in Pharaoh’s house, but Moses
chose raw faith over sugared reasoning.
Living by faith will always call us to give up the pomp and pride of the
world.
By faith, Moses left the familiar. He was certainly afraid of being discovered
after killing an Egyptian while defending a fellow Hebrew, but Moses could have
stayed. He could have stayed in Egypt
and started a slaves’ revolt against Pharaoh.
But, by faith, he realized that it was not yet God’s timing. So he left Egypt. That must have been a difficult decision with
a man who had such a passion for defending his people. Trusting in God’s promises often means a
great deal of patience and Moses learned that.
By faith, Moses was willing to do strange things. We can easily read of him smearing blood on
the doorposts at the time of the Passover and not think much of it. But this would have been an exceedingly
strange thing to do. You have a highly
educated Egyptian who grew up in the height of luxury willing to trust God and
get his hands dirty, smearing blood on a doorpost, believing that it would save
people through obedience to God. How
strange this must have seemed to him, to the Egyptians, and to even his fellow
Israelites. Not to mention, that
Egyptians reviled sheep and shepherds and saw them as an uncouth and dirty
animal. Yet here was Moses willing to go
elbow-deep in blood because God had made promises and Moses was ready to put
his life and reputation on the line for those promises. Having faith will often call us to the
strange and unusual; to things that seem downright stupid from the perspective
of the world.
When we are willing to live by faith, however, we will
tend to find that God acts on our behalf.
It won’t always be in the types of miraculous ways that are described in
verses 29-31, but it will happen nonetheless. What we can learn from these
examples, though, is that if they had not remained faithful to God’s promises,
they would have missed out on the incredible things that God did in their
lives. The Israelites walked through the
Red Sea, but they would have never been there if they hadn’t stepped out on
faith and believed God’s promises that he would protect them as part of his
plan for the world. Joshua’s army saw
the walls of Jericho fall after doing nothing more than march around them but
they would never have experienced the earth-shattering roar of the falling
walls if they had not acted in obedience on God’s word and started walking in
faith, regardless of how crazy it seemed.
Imagine Rahab’s surprise when all of the walls of the city fell around
her, except for her house which was situated at the top of the city walls. She would not have witnessed that if she had
not decided to act in faith that God’s promises were not just for the Jews but
all that would live in trust of him.
What we discover is that living by faith takes extreme
trust in God and his word, but it demands much of us. To truly live by faith we have to refuse what
the world has to offer and let faith overcome our feelings. We have to be willing to leave the comfortable
and familiar and let faith overcome our desire for security. We have to have the courage to do the unusual
and let faith overcome our fear.
Devotional Thought
At the heart of living by faith is trust in God. A life of faith is the evidence of our trust
in God. What evidence is there in your
life of your trust in God? If we were to
lay out the balance of your life for display, would we see more evidence of
trust in God or a lack of trust in him?
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