January 13, 2002 Hebrews 11:23-26
“More than a fish”
INTRODUCTION
How do you identify a Christian? How do you identify a person of faith? Is a person of faith one who has read all of the “Left Behind” series and who has recently purchased a CD by a Christian recording artist? We’ve come up with all kinds of ways – t-shirts with Christian logos and sayings, WWJD bracelets and jewelry, and a myriad of Jesus bumper stickers.
The other day, I was driving down the road, and I saw a small sign on the back of the car in front of me. It was in the shape of a fish. The person who owns that car put it there to identify that family as a Christian family. Lately, I have noticed a few variations on that symbol as I have seen it on various cars. Inside some fish now are the Greek letters that spell fish – ichthus. There are also some fish out there that have feet growing out of them. This “evolved” fish identifies the person inside as a believer in evolution rather than in creation. It is the classic attempt of the world to take this Christian symbol and distort it to fit their own mold. Not to be outdone, Christian retailers then came up with the idea of a two-fish symbol – one small fish with legs attached symbolizing evolution and another larger fish symbolizing Christianity swallowing that smaller fish.
But just putting a fish small or large on the back of your car doesn’t necessarily identify you as a person who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ. It may just mean that you are religious or that you think it looks cool or that you want to fit in with a particular group.
All of the people that we have looked at so far here in Hebrews 11 knew what it meant to be identified as people of faith and to identify with and stand with other people of faith. But nobody knew it better than Moses.
And Moses knew something else too. He knew that there is a huge difference between being a person of faith and making it known that you are a person of faith. Moses had been a person of faith for a long time, but he didn’t make it known to all the world until he was 40 years old. Let’s see what that took. In the process, we’ll see what identifying ourselves as people of faith will take for us.
1. Identifying yourself as a person of faith means rejecting the world’s pressure. (vs. 23)
Moses was born into a world where identifying yourself as a person of faith was a dangerous thing. In Exodus 1, we are told of the horrible command which the Pharaoh of Egypt handed down to the people. Pharaoh became fearful because the Israelites were rapidly growing in number. He feared that if an enemy attacked Egypt, the Israelites would join forces with the enemy. So he subjected them to hard labor thinking that would slow down their rapid growth. The plan backfired. The Israelite population continued to grow and now at an even faster pace. The tougher the work, the more the Israelites grew in number. So Pharaoh came up with the plan of killing all the boy babies. He was going to destroy a generation. He told the midwives to kill the baby boys when they were first born. Maybe he wanted it to look like the boys were dying in childbirth because of natural complications. When that plan failed like the previous one, he decided on the direct route. He told all the people that every boy baby born to a Hebrew – an Israelite – was to be cast into the Nile River. He wasn’t willing to play around anymore. He wanted results.
Pharaoh’s fear caused him to commit gross sin. It was that same kind of fear that thousands of years later caused King Herod to kill all male children in the city of Bethlehem that were two years old and under.
Unconquered fear will always cause sin. It might cause blatant sinful actions such as murder, stealing or lying. But more likely, it will cause us to withhold actions that we should have done but failed to because of our fear – actions like speaking out for justice, spreading the good news, loving people that no one else loves, and working for the protection of those who cannot protect themselves.
Pharaoh yielded to his fear. Moses’ mother conquered her fear. She identified herself as a person of faith by not giving in to the pressure that the most powerful man in the whole world put on her. She showed her refusal to give in to this pressure by doing three things.
By faith, she produced a son. (Exodus 2:1-2a) Jochebed, Moses’ mother, lived in an uncertain world. When she and Amram got married and decided to have a child, Pharaoh had already given his death sentence to baby boys. Jochebed could have given in to the pressure and just decided not to have any children. That’s the decision that mothers in China must face. Once they have their first child, they are under tremendous pressure not to have any more children. If they do get pregnant with a second child and are discovered, that child is aborted, and they may be forcibly sterilized. In spite of the pressure put on her to not have children , Jochebed had a son.
By faith, she protected that son. (Exodus 2:2b) The king’s command was that her son be drowned. She could not allow that. She and Amram hid the baby boy for 3 months. That in itself took a lot of faith. How do you hide a new-born baby? You may be able to hide him from the eyes of your enemies, but how do you hide from their ears that distinct cry that new-borns have? In protecting her son, she was placing her own life and the life of her family in danger. But she was willing to sacrifice anything for the safety of her son. She had faith in the promises of God that one day, the Israelites would be leaving Egypt behind. She had faith that they would inherit the land of Canaan. And somehow, she knew that her son would be instrumental in the fulfillment of that promise. I don’t know if God had told her directly or if it was just one of those things that only a mother knows, but she knew her son was special. So she refused to yield to the pressure, and she protected her son.
By faith, she placed her son in God’s care. (Exodus 2:3) The day came when she could no longer protect her son from the evils of the world. She couldn’t keep him a secret anymore. The pressure that she felt now was no longer from Pharaoh but from within. It is the same pressure that any parent feels when they are getting ready to send their child off into an evil world. You want to keep them safe. You want to hold them tight. You want to lock them up in their room forever not because they have been bad but because the world is bad, and you don’t want the world to have access to them. Jochebed had kept her son from the world and the world from her son for 3 months. She had done all that she could do. Now, she had to place her son in God’s care. She put him in a basket made of papyrus, coated it with something to make it float, and then set him in the river. Only God could take care of her son now.
Jochebed didn’t yield to the pressure of the world or the pressure of the world’s way of thinking. That identifies her as a person of faith, and it puts her in company with a lot of other people of faith. When Daniel was told that he couldn’t pray to God for a whole month, he chose to pray anyway even though he knew that doing so would mean being eaten alive by lions. And when he prayed, he didn’t pray in secret. He did as he always had done. He opened his windows toward Jerusalem and prayed to the King of the universe. He identified himself – he made it known – that he was a person of faith. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were told, “Bow down to this idol or die”, they stood tall. They didn’t yield to the pressure. The result was that they identified themselves as people of faith, and God received glory. Peter and John, two of Jesus’ disciples, stood before the rulers of their time accused of speaking about Jesus. The rulers pressured them not to speak about Jesus anymore. Knowing that rejecting that pressure might mean torture or even death, they responded with these words: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19:20) Right after their release they went back to telling people about Jesus. They refused to yield to the pressure. The result was that God was glorified and people were saved.
A young girl gets pregnant, and she feels enormous pressure to have an abortion. The father wants nothing to do with the baby, and will have nothing more to do with her if she doesn’t end the pregnancy. The parents pressure her to get an abortion. They don’t want the stigma of a pregnant teenager, the responsibility of a baby or the financial strain of a new mouth. The abortion industry pressures her to get an abortion. They want the money. She doesn’t know what to do. All the reasons for having an abortion make a lot of sense. But that would mean going against what God says about the value of life. And it would also mean going against this strange feeling of love that she has growing inside her for this little baby.
I know what Jochebed would have decided, because I know what she did in a similar situation. She chose to have a son. She chose to have faith in God and not yield to the pressure. The result was that for a period of time, she got to raise her own son – for which she got paid, I might add – and she was able to establish a heritage of faith for her son.
Romans 12:1 “Be not conformed to this world…”, or as someone has paraphrased it, “Don’t let the world pressure you into its mold.” A person of faith identifies himself as a person of faith when he refuses to buckle under the world’s pressure.
2. Identifying yourself as a person of faith means rejecting the world’s prestige. (vs. 24)
The Bible doesn’t say how long Moses got to live with his real family. But probably somewhere around the age of 3, his mother took him to the palace where he became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. It was then that he received the name “Moses”. Moses grew up in Egyptian society. According to Acts 7:22, he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He would have learned hieroglyphics, architecture, battle strategy. He would have studied the arts and the sciences. He was a natural born leader. He was going places. He was Pharaoh’s grandson. I doubt that he was in line for the throne, but that was okay. That meant that he could be important without having all the responsibility. He was a commoner who had made it good and was living in high society. It was tempting to live as a part of that society for the rest of his life.
But when Moses was “grown”, he had to make a choice. Somehow, he knew that he was not an Egyptian. We aren’t told how he knew, but he knew. He had to choose whether he was going to live as an Egyptian or as a Hebrew. Who was he going to identify with – his adoptive family or his true family? If he stayed where he was, he could work within the system and change some of the rules his people endured. Maybe he could make their burden lighter. Maybe he could get them better hours, more food, and better clothing. He was Pharaoh’s grandson after all. He had prestige, and with prestige came power! But if he chose to identify with his own people, he could become their deliverer. He could do more than just make their slavery easier. He could set them free!
Moses realized something that his predecessor Joseph had known. The position and prestige that both men enjoyed only had value as they enabled them to help God’s people. If and when that prestige prevented them from doing what God said, then they would have to reject it in favor of a life of faith. That’s what Moses chose. He left behind everything to identify with his people and with his God.
From man’s standpoint, he sacrificed everything for nothing. But things that the world considers great have nothing to do with what God considers great. Jesus’ choice as the greatest among men was not a king or a person of wealth and worldly influence. It was John the Baptist, a man who had no prestige (Mt. 11:11). He wore camel’s hide as his clothing and ate locusts and wild honey for his diet. And his words were words of rebuke and conviction not words of comfort. His clothes smelled, his breath smelled, and his words stung to the core of a man’s soul. Yet God called him “the greatest”. He was great because he was obedient to God not because he had prestige and power.
That should give hope to us. None of us as individuals and we as a church don’t have much prestige or power. We don’t have a beautiful church building with a high steeple. We don’t have thousands of people. We don’t have millions of dollars that we can give away to missions and other humanitarian causes. None of those are bad, and I pray that we have some of them one day. But when those things become our goal in order that we may gain prestige, we have stopped living as people of faith and have started judging greatness by the world’s standards. We don’t need any of those things to be great. All we need is faith in God and the obedience that faith produces.
Moses knew what it was like to live as an Egyptian. He had no idea what it would be like to live as an Israelite. But by faith, he rejected the prestige of the world. It made sense when you think about it. After all, when given the choice of being known as the grandson of the king of Egypt or being known as the son of God who is the King of the universe, which would you choose? Moses could reject what Pharaoh offered because God offered something much better.
People of faith identify themselves as people of faith by rejecting the prestige of the world.
3. Identifying yourself as a person of faith means rejecting the world’s pleasure. (vs. 25)
Living in Pharaoh’s household, Moses would have had many opportunities for pleasure. One of the biggest pleasures in my life is food. I enjoy eating. Lately, I’ve enjoyed it a little bit too much. Moses would have had the best food – anything he wanted, imported from all over the world. He would have had entertainment, music, the arts, mental stimulation. And none of those were bad. He could have had other things too like any woman he wanted or as many women as he wanted. He could have had the feeling of power that comes through witchcraft and astrology. And he might have indulged himself in many of these pleasures over the 40 years that he spent as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. But in that time, he learned something that most moderns haven’t figured out. The pleasure that sin brings only lasts for a very short time. And when the fun is over, there are consequences that you have to pay – the hangover after getting drunk or worse, the knowledge that you took someone’s life with your car while you were driving home from the bar. The pregnancy that came from the one-night stand or the feeling of guilt and shame after the abortion. The wrecked marriage because of an addiction to pornography or AIDS because of a homosexual lifestyle. There are always consequences to sin. The pleasure of the sin lasts only a moment. But the consequences of the sin may haunt you for the rest of your life.
David, the 2nd king of Israel knew all about the passing pleasure of sin. One night, he saw Bathsheba bathing in the moonlight. He called for her, she came, they spent the night together. Not long after, she sent him a note – “I’m pregnant.” David had Bathsheba’s husband killed so that David could marry her and make it look like she had gotten pregnant while they were married. But God knew about the sin. The baby that came as a result of their short-lived pleasure died. One of David’s other sons attempted a coup on David and actually held the throne for a short time. David’s house was always plagued with pain and suffering because of the short-lived pleasure of sin. The pleasure is brief, but the pain is lasting. If you don’t believe me, ask the people in prison who because of one act will spend the rest of their lives in jail. Ask the lung-cancer patient if the pleasure of the cigarettes was worth the slow agonizing death that now awaits them. Ask the parents that buried their teenage child after they experimented with drugs for the first time and had an overdose.
Moses had it rough. He had lived with these pleasures for 40 years. And now, he was making the choice to give them up. When Moses was eating manna during the 40 years in the wilderness, I wonder if he ever thought about the steak and lobster that he had enjoyed in Egypt. It is far easier to never have a particular pleasure than it is to have enjoyed it and then try to give it up. Boys and girls and teenagers, I want you to give me your full attention for just a minute. There are people here in our church who are struggling with an addiction to cigarettes. There have been in the past and maybe now are people who struggle with an alcohol problem. And there may be others who struggle with pornography or gambling. They have been trying for years to overcome it. They’ve prayed – even begged for God to take it away. It’s got a strangle-hold on them, and it won’t let go. Do you know what each of these people would tell you? It is far easier to never do something than it is to start doing it and then try to stop. It’s the law of inertia. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.
Don’t pick up that first cigarette. Don’t take that first drink. Don’t buy that magazine or sneak the one that you saw dad looking at. Stay away from it and save yourself years of misery.
Not all of the pleasures that our world offers are sinful. Football, whether it is played by a grown man or in a pee-wee football league is not sinful. But if it gets in the way of doing what God has said for you to do, then it is wrong. Food is not sinful. If it were, we’d all have a real big problem. But for some of us, we are quicker to respond to the grumblings of our stomachs than we are to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. If the everyday pleasures of this world are keeping you from responding to God’s call on your life, then you either need to forsake them or get them under control.
If we were to put pleasure and pain on two opposite ends of a line and map out the journey that Moses took away from the pleasure that his world offered, we would find something interesting. Moses didn’t go from pleasure to less pleasure, or even from pleasure to no pleasure. He went from pleasure to pain. Heb. 11:25 says that “he chose to be mistreated” – to endure pain – “along with the people of God…” He could have been a leader of a cultured people in beautiful, bountiful Egypt. But he chose to be a leader of a complaining people in a barren, dry wilderness.
It might be easier to live God’s way, the way of faith, if there wasn’t such a huge contrast between God’s way and the world’s way. The world’s way is a way of self-indulgence and pleasure. God’s way is the way of self-sacrifice and pain. But remember, the world’s pleasure is short-lived. It leads to pain. And in the same way, God’s pain is short-lived. It leads to eternal pleasure in the presence of the Almighty God.
Once upon a time there was a man who had nothing, and God gave him ten apples.
He gave him the first three apples to eat.
He gave him the second three apples to trade for shelter from the sun and rain.
He gave him the third three apples to trade for clothing to wear.
He gave him the last apple so that he might have something to give back to God to show his gratitude for the other nine.
The man ate the first three apples.
He traded the second three for a shelter from the sun and rain.
He traded the third three for clothing to wear.
Then he looked at the tenth apple. It seemed bigger and juicier than the rest. He knew that God had given him the tenth apple so that he might return it to Him out of the gratitude for the other nine. But the tenth apple looked bigger and juicier than the rest. And he reasoned that God had all the other apples in the world. So the man ate the tenth apple – and gave back to God the core. – newsletter in the 1st Baptist Church of Dallas
A person of faith identifies herself as a person of faith by rejecting the world’s pleasure.
4. Identifying yourself as a person of faith means rejecting the world’s plenty. (vs. 26)
In the position that he held, Moses would have had access to great wealth. The discovery of Tutankamen’s tomb many years ago let the world know how wealthy the Egyptian Empire had been. It would not have been a sin for Moses to be wealthy even as it is not a sin to be wealthy today. Many people who are wealthy use their resources to help people and fund the spread of the Gospel all around the world. But it is a sin to allow wealth to control you and let it become your focus. If wealth, whether it be the desire for it or the desire to hold onto what you have, prevents you from being willing to be obedient to God, then it has become a sin for you.
Moses rejected wealth not because it was bad but because it did not fit into God’s priority for his life. Paul, the apostle who wrote most of the New Testament, did much the same thing when he chose to remain single. He knew that there was nothing sinful about getting married, but having a wife did not fit into God’s plan for Paul’s life.
In one respect, it might seem like this is the easiest one of all for most of us. What are you talking about rejecting wealth? I haven’t got any wealth to reject! All right. Let’s examine that for a minute. Here are some questions for you to mull over in your mind. Do you tithe back to God on the money that you receive in your pay-check regardless of how tight things get? Do you choose to work on Sunday or are tempted to take a job on Sunday not because your job requires you to work on Sunday but because the pay is better, or the benefits are better, or it fits more into your schedule? Do you take money that God has told you to give away to meet the needs of someone else and use it on your own pleasure? Think about it. Maybe wealth is a bigger issue for you than you thought.
We haven’t got as much time to spend on this portion of Moses’ decision, so I only want to point out two things quickly. The first is that we now have the overriding motivation that enabled Moses to reject all of these beautiful things that were staring him in the face. He knew that there was something “of greater value than all the treasures of Egypt” and he was able to look “ahead to his reward.” All that Egypt had to offer was nothing in comparison to what awaited him if he was faithful to do what God said. The same is true for us. If we choose to identify ourselves as the people of God, reject the world and what it has to offer, then there is a treasure waiting for us that no thief can steal, and no rust can destroy.
The second thing that I want you to see is that he rejected all these things “for the sake of Christ”. Though Moses never met Jesus while he was on earth, he knew that the Messiah was coming. Moses was going to deliver one group of people from slavery to Egypt. Jesus made it possible for all people on the earth to be delivered from slavery to sin and death. But before He could be that Deliverer, he had to identify himself as the Son of God. How did He do that? – by rejecting what the world had to offer in favor of His Father’s mission. When offered the prestige of being ruler of all the kingdoms of the earth, he rejected it. When he was offered the pleasure of bread after having not eaten for 40 days, he rejected it. When he was pressured into doing what He knew was not part of the Father’s plan for His life, He did not buckle. He stood firm on the rock of the Word of God.
People of faith identify themselves as people of faith by rejecting the world’s plenty.
CONCLUSION
There is much more to identifying yourself as a person who lives by faith than simply putting a fish on the back of your car. But you say, “What’s the big deal? Why can’t I just live my life as a secret Christian? I’ll still do what’s right, but I don’t like making waves.” (Luke 9:26 NIV) If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. “Okay, but why do I have to reject all this stuff? I’m a part of this world. Why can’t I enjoy what it has to offer? Can’t I tack my Christianity on top of all this other stuff?” (1 John 2:15-17 NIV) Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
INVITATION
As Christians, we are told to be “in the world, but not of the world”. Maybe you’ve been living too much as a part of the world. You’ve been yielding to the pressure to do wrong things or maybe you’ve been yielding to the pressure not to do the right things – the things that you know you should be doing. You’ve allowed the world’s pleasures, sinful or not to attract your attention away from the plan that God has for your life. You’ve refused to become a fool for God because it would steal the little bit of prestige that you do have. You’ve allowed the plenty of the world – the wealth that it has to offer to prevent you from storing up treasures in heaven. Reject those things. Follow the example of Jesus “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb. 12:2)
