34 - Heb_11:23-29
CHAPTER X X X I V.
MOSES.
Hebrews 11:23-29. OF all the great men whom God raised up in Israel, there is none whom the nation regarded with a more profound veneration than Moses. By him they were brought out of Egypt; through him they received the law. During forty years he ruled in Jeshurun, combining prophetic, priestly, and royal dignity. They owed to him, under God, all that was precious to them as a nation. There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face; who had assigned to him the position of mediator, of a servant in all God’s house. And as his position was wonderful, his character also was marvellous. In him we see the majesty of a solemn, God-fearing, and chastened man, whose soul was constantly dwelling apart in the adoration of the Most High, combined with a most singular meekness, and a most fervent and self-denying affection. His love to God shines forth in his love to Israel, which forgave, hoped, endured all things; which ingratitude never weakened, and disappointment never blunted. We see in this man of God courage and gentleness, fortitude and patience - zeal for God’s glory and motherly meekness towards the people. He bore the image of Him who afterwards came to Israel the perfect manifestation of divine love. His words also seem to surpass all other prophetic words in grandeur, lucid simplicity, and power. And the five books which bear his name, as they are unequalled in all literature in their beauty and majesty, became the most cherished treasure of his nation.
It is most interesting that Scripture gives us a picture of Moses, from his infancy to his departure. The Scripture biography of some great men begins with their manhood. We do not know anything of the early course of their lives. Thus we read abruptly of Elijah the Tishbite, appearing with a prophetic announcement. But in the case of Samuel, of David, of our blessed Lord Himself, we are told the history of their childhood and youth. Now the apostle, in reviewing the .life of Moses, wishes to show us that it was the life of faith. And thus the history of Moses is to testify of righteousness by faith, though he is the lawgiver. In like manner Paul often proved, that the law was only given to point out the righteousness which is by faith.
Faith in the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, faith in the divine promise, enabled the parents of Moses to look away from the king’s commandment, and to confide in the unseen God, and to realize the promised future. Thus was his life preserved by an act of faith in the power and mercy of the covenant God.
Brought up by the daughter of Pharaoh as her son, instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, the faith which was in his father and mother, and of which they doubtless constantly testified to him, seemed to be in an uncongenial atmosphere, and exposed to most adverse influences. But when he was come to years, when he reached the age in which the world with its attractive beauty is fully appreciated by the youthful heart, it was then that his faith was not eclipsed, but manifested, not shipwrecked, but, as it were, consummated; it was then that the good seed which for years had quietly been cherished by the divine Spirit in his soul sprung up in most lovely flower; the riches and honours of the world had not choked it. The only free man of his nation, the only son of Abraham, who need not have called him a Hebrew, he voluntarily made the choice; here fused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. His heart was with God, and with God’s people he would take his position. Abraham was called to leave his kindred, Moses was called to join his kindred. In both cases the choice was the same - equally free, equally difficult.
Moses gave up the world; ambition had the prospect of honour and greatness; the culture of the most civilized state was fascinating to the mind; treasure and wealth held out potent allurement. All this - and does it not comprise "all that is in the world," and in its most attractive and elevated manner? - Moses gave up. And, on the other side, what awaited him? To join a down-trodden nation of slaves, whose only riches was the promise of the invisible God. As the choice of Moses was perfectly free, so we enquire with greater interest. What was it which determined the choice? And here we might at first fancy it was the impulse of a generous and patriotic heart, which espoused the cause of the suffering and despised race. Such a feeling is indeed noble, but we may doubt whether it would have been strong enough to make the sacrifices which Moses made; and whether it would not have preferred the path of worldly wisdom and policy, and sought to ameliorate the people’s condition by securing first a position of power and influence. The Scripture and the subsequent history prove that it was faith which made the choice. Not reason, not sentiment but the mysterious clinging of the heart to the promise of God, the realizing of things not seen, and the confident expectation of the future reward. Moses chose to suffer affliction with Israel, not because they were his people, but because they were God’s people. The object of his choice was God; the God who chose his fathers, who revealed to them His truth and grace, and commanded them to walk before Him without fear; the God who was not ashamed to be called their God, and to whom he had been dedicated in his infancy.
We call this choice free, because Moses was in the anomalous position of an Israelite at the court of Pharaoh severed from the bondage and the reproach of his nation. But it was free in a yet higher sense. For in choosing God as the object of our love and service, the heart for the first time becomes free. Mysterious as this act is, this turning-point in the history of the soul, we know that it is the birth of our liberty; that it is really the first act of perfect liberty, of conscious liberty, the first act in which the soul, looking down into its depths as into a transparent lake, does what it wills to do. "I will arise and go to my Father." I will love and serve God. I will confess Christ. I will be the Lord’s. And so God makes us "willing," and sets us free; and here is the great triumph of divine power in its wisdom and love. We cannot but obey God, yet we freely turn to God. Necessity and liberty are blended. The choice was made by faith; and that which was attractive to faith was the very thing which to reason and nature is repulsive - the reproach of Christ. It is the cross, which is a magnet, drawing the heart.
There seems an anachronism in the expression "the reproach of Christ." But the expression is chosen purposely. We know that the outgoings of Messiah were from of old. In the sacrifice of Isaac, in the humiliation of Joseph, in the sufferings of Israel, we see foreshadows of the perfect Servant, who was to be both the Sufferer and the Redeemer of His people. "Out of Egypt have I called my Son." Israel is a type of Christ. The ancient Jewish teachers spoke of the pangs and sorrows of Messiah, and divided them into three - those which He would suffer Himself, those which would be endured by His people before and by His people after the advent. Thus as the apostle speaks of filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his body for his body’s sake, Moses by faith beheld in Israel’s sufferings, and those that awaited him, the reproach of the true Israel, Israel’s glory and hope, the Messiah.*(*Compare1 Corinthians 10:4;1 Peter 1:10. Christ, as the Word, the Messenger of the covenant, was with Israel. The coming Christ was also typified by Israel; hence the typical meaning of Israel’s sufferings, of Joseph’s, of David’s. The expression "esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches" is therefore one which comprises many aspects. The New Testament counterpart may be seen in1 Peter 4:13;Php 3:10;Colossians 2:23;2 Timothy 3:12, etc.)
Moses thus believed in the Redeemer-God that was to come, and by faith he became a partaker of the sufferings, even as he expected to be a partaker of the inheritance. He had regard to the recompense of the reward. His faith was the confidence of things hoped for. And through the most painful trials, during forty years of incessant care, toil, sorrow, grief of heart, amidst the greatest difficulties and struggles, he held fast this hope; he bore the burden of the nation patiently and lovingly, in the constant exercise of priestly intercession, relying on the Lord, rejoicing in the Christ, the Rock, that followed them. As he himself expressed it in his Psalm, the everlasting God was his dwelling-place; he knew the sin of man, and the righteous anger of God, but Jehovah’s mercy made him rejoice, and the beauty of the Lord was upon him. (Ps. 90.) On mount Nebo his earthly pilgrimage was ended. Mysterious, unwitnessed by mortal eye, was his exodus from this troubled life. Only angels were present, who had guarded the little ark of bulrushes in which a hundred and twenty years before the beautiful babe lay helpless, except for the omnipotence and faithfulness of the covenant-God, to whom the faith of loving parental hearts had commended him. While the peace of God filled his soul, the archangel Michael guarded his body. Centuries after, we behold him and Elijah descend from the celestial realms, and on the mount of transfiguration they conversed with the Son of God about the exodus which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. How bright is the light, how exceeding great is the glory, how abundant the recompense of the reward! How blessed was the choice of faith, which preferred the affliction of God’s people and the reproach of Messiah to all the pleasures of sin and treasures of Egypt! The forty years which Moses lived as a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian seem a long period of inactivity and obscure leisure. For what purpose, we feel inclined to ask, this waste of years? God watches over the days and hours of His chosen people. He who has numbered the very hairs of our head, will He not watch also over our years? Moses had made the great choice; he had forsaken Egypt’s grandeur and felicity; he had embraced the reproach of Christ. He learned now in the solitude of Midian to crucify self; to wait quietly on God; to give up his own will and strength; to be a stranger and pilgrim, even as his fathers were.
God’s servants are often sent into the desert. So was John the Baptist, ere he began his short but brilliant witness-life, a bright torch; thus did Saul, after his conversion, go into Arabia. And was not the ministry of Jesus, in whom was no earth-born impure element of false zeal or strength, preceded by the thirty years stillness of Nazareth?
After forty years the Lord appeared unto Moses. Scripture does not conceal from us the timidity, the unbelief, the resistance of Moses, when the great command was given to him to deliver Israel out of Egypt. Formerly he was too ready and swift to unsheath the sword, and to rescue the oppressed. Now he is conscious of man’s weakness, of his own utter inability for so great a task. But God’s word and promise over came all his difficulties. Moses asked, Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh? The Lord answered by reminding him who He was, He revealed His name, and promised His presence and all-sufficient help. By faith Moses went to Egypt and to Pharaoh, and neither the wrath of the king nor the murmuring, the bitter reproaches and the unbelief of his own nation, moved him. He endured, because before the eyes of his heart stood the mighty God, who is invisible. Moses is the first of whom Scripture tells us that performed miracles; believing the Word of God, he showed great and mighty signs. By faith he ordained the passover and the sprinkling of blood. He believed the mercy of God, who had chosen Israel, and was their Redeemer, passing over their iniquity, transgression, and sin, delivering them through the blood of the Lamb. Here was the centre and heart of his faith. As the representative and leader of the nation, he had firs: to receive himself the salvation of God by faith. Notice this passover is his first ordinance to Israel: before the giving of law was the gospel. "Believe, and thou shalt be saved." The first command given by Moses was, "Believe and live." Afterwards the law was given by him, and the law speaks not of faith, but says, "Do this and live." But salvation is of God through faith, redemption is by the blood of the Lamb. Moses himself preaches here salvation without works, by grace, through faith in the Substitute. By faith he led them through the Red Sea. Israel murmured. They reproached him for bringing them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. On the faith of Moses rested the burden of the whole nation. He said unto the people, "Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will shew to you to-day." But while he spake these courageous words in the name and for the honour of Jehovah, his heart was crying to the Lord, "Deliver us." And to this silent prayer was the answer, "Why criest thou unto Me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." God’s miracles pass through some believers hearts. They are not merely the children of divine omnipotence and mercy, but the travail and anguish of believing and praying hearts. Elijah prayed, and it rained not; he prayed again, and it rained. Thus we are told in the epistle of James; but in the book of Kings we read only the miraculous facts. This faith of Moses will be remembered for ever; and the song of Moses, the servant of God, forever associated with the song of the Lamb; for Israel’s deliverance out of the Red Sea is a type of the true and final deliverance from all evil, from sin and death, from the world and Satan. And it is by faith only that we can pass through the sea as by dry land. We grasp the promise: "When thou passeth through the waters, I will be with thee; and they shall not overflow thee." The Lord is our salvation, and in Him is our trust.
Israel is a typical nation. The things which happened unto them are recorded for our instruction and comfort. The things which happened unto them, happen unto us also. Hence all Scripture is to us truth, reality, experience; it is not a record of the past merely, but it is an ever-new description of the experience of all God’s children.
We also were in Egypt, and had to learn that we could not bring about our deliverance by our own strength and zeal. Like Moses, we had to flee from such attempts of self-wrought emancipation into the wilderness, and wait quietly upon the Lord. When we were still, and knew that it was not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, God showed mercy. We also have kept by faith the passover and the sprinkling of blood; when, acknowledging our guilt and helplessness, we believed in the Lamb of God, when in faith we repented, eating bitter herbs, and began to gird our loins and to prepare for the walk and fight through the wilderness. We also went through the Red Sea, and then sang the song of praise to God; when we were taught the power of Christ’s resurrection, and when the Holy Ghost, separating us by the cross from Egypt, brought us through resurrection unto the new life, and raised our affections to the things above. This history of the spiritual Israel, described in Scripture and by the saints of God, is so clear and so full of great thoughts, that many know and appreciate it intellectually; it is so beautiful and ideal that many grasp it admiringly with their imagination. But do we know it by faith? Have we by faith kept the passover, left Egypt, and passed through the Red Sea? In the intellectual and imaginative belief there is no pain, no contrition of heart, no repentance, no godly sorrow; there is no travailing in birth. But faith is the trust of a guilty, sin-convinced, and helpless soul in a crucified Saviour.
Israel in Egypt. Look at another aspect of this history: "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." The saints who are precious in His sight, whom He purchased with the blood of His own Son, and for whom He has prepared an everlasting inheritance, God’s elect must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. Who would recognize them in their earthly sufferings as the favourites of God? Despised of the world, they are a royal priesthood, and the joint-heirs of Christ; and oppressed with manifold trials and sufferings, they are yet the possessors of all things.
God chasteneth whom He loveth; and it becomes the future kings to have the experience of the Master, and to take their cross upon them. Yet even while they are thus bearing the marks of the Lord Jesus, they are upheld by God. The measure of their trial is fixed by infinite wisdom and tenderness. The angel of the covenant is afflicted in all their afflictions; God regards them as the apple of His eye. The suffering and tried believer has the most consoling experience of God’s goodness and faithfulness; nay, of God Himself as their portion. Joseph in his prison, David in the mountain solitude, Jonah in the belly of the whale, Daniel in the lions den, the three men in the fiery furnace, Peter chained to Roman soldiers, Paul and Silas in their fetters at Philippi, John in the isle of Patmos, were they not all able to praise the Lord, and to rejoice in His love?
Weak and despised believers are the pillars of the world. The intercession of Moses prevails to avert judgment from a whole nation; Samuel prays, and it thunders, and the enemies are defeated; Elijah’s faith brings down rain on the parched ground; for the sake of Paul, and through him, the ship’s crew were saved, and not one of them perished. God will do all things to secure His people’s good. Sun and moon stand still in their course; the dial’s hand goes back more than an hour; iron swims on the river; the barrel of meal and cruse of oil fail not; five loaves and two fishes feed a multitude.
It is the will of God to do great things for us. All things are ours; all things work together for good to them that love God who are the called according to His purpose; all things are freely given unto us with Christ, the Son, whom God spared not, but gave up for our everlasting salvation. But it is the will of God that we should learn faith. By faith a poor and guilty sinner looks to Jesus Christ crucified, and says, By grace I have been saved; by faith, continuing his gaze on Jesus, he adds, The Father Himself loveth me; by faith he beholds in the wounds of Jesus the election of God, free, spontaneous, never-changing - the choice which in the still eternity counted him one of the jewels, and set him apart for the glory of the ages to come. Resting in this boundless and amazing love of God, as it shines through the Saviour Jesus Christ, the believer lives a life of constant difficulty, trial, conflict, and yet of continual victory and thanksgiving. Faith says, Who can lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? Faith asks triumphantly, Who can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus? Triumphantly it is true; but. with deep humility, and in the painful conflict with sin, with troubles and temptations of the present life, a wretched man is the believer, and yet a man giving thanks to God.* Saving faith humbles. No mark is more certain and more universal. Suspect all faith that does not clothe the soul with humility. Suspect all faith in which there is not pain, sorrow, conflict. (* Romans 8:23; Romans 7:24-25.) But if we die daily, let us also rejoice in Christ Jesus.
True faith hath a "yet not I."* There is a threefold "yet not I." One that relates to sin, one that relates to spiritual life, and one that relates to duties. "I sin; yet not I." Delighting in the law of God after the inward man, I still do that I would not; it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. (*From Bridge’sSermons on Faith.(Edited by the Countess of Huntingdon.)
"I live; yet not I." Christ liveth in me, and that because I believe in the Saviour, that He loved me, and that by His own gift of Himself He is mine.
I work, yet not I, as the apostle Paul writes: "I have laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."
Christ dwells in the heart byfaith. Hence the wonderful paradox: I, yet not I. He that by grace gives up himself shall find his soul - his life; his name, his individuality shall endure for ever; he shall abide and dwell in God for evermore. He has found himself, he has been found of the Great Shepherd. And he, who belongs to the Christ of God, shall inherit all things; for all things are ours if we be Christ’s, who is the Son and the glory of God.