The Wonder Of Faith Series

Look at the choice Moses made. He gave up a palace for a shepherd’s tent. Riches for poverty. Station and prominence for isolation and humility. Have you made that choice to take your stand with the people of God rather than have the temporary enjoyment of sin. Is that decision clear cut in your mind?

No one needs to be convinced of the fun offered by sin. It can feed our pride, satisfy out of control desires and appetites and much more. But it has two characteristics that go unnoticed by a blind world. It is evil and it is short lived or transitory. No matter how satisfying it seems to be, it is temporary. Its seeming satisfaction is deceptive and fleeting.

The sin that enticed Moses was retaining his worldly position of remaining in the Egyptian Court. He had opportunity not simply to be a supporter and promoter of the world system, but a leader in it. Moses had a choice before him between a people suffering in slavery and the best that this world has to offer. God asks us also to choose, either the world or Him. If you do not refuse the world and become obedient to God, you have chosen the fleeting pleasures of this world. God will not allow you to serve Him and mammon.

[Beware of Friendly Snakes] How many of you have a garden? There is an old tale about a youth who, while hoeing in his field during the spring thaw, came across a snake. He raised his hoe to kill it, but the snake begged for mercy. “I am too frozen to do you any harm,” it cried. The youth, full of compassion, picked up the half-dead serpent and put it into his coat, against his chest. As he began to work, the snake got warmer and warmer. Suddenly, the snake bit the youth. The youth frantically reached into his coat and pulled out the beautifully colored and glistening snake, throwing it to the ground. “Why?” asked the boy, “I befriended you. I trusted you.”

“True!” hissed the snake as it slithered away, “but do not blame me. You knew I was a snake when you picked me up.”

Like Moses of old, many people know that sin’s pleasures are but for a season (Heb. 11:25), that the world will pass away and the lusts thereof (I Jn. 2:16-17). Yet they continue to indulge in the pleasures of sin. They take sin into their own bosom and go about their business. Someday when these things have passed away and they are faced with eternity, they will cry out against sin and accuse it. But it will be too late for some! Sin will reply, “You knew I was sin! You knew that I was but for a season. Do not blame me!” Truly, one cannot blame the enticements of sin with the warning of God being what it is.

IV. FAITH REJECTS THE WORLD’S PLENTY, 26.

The bases for Moses’ choice is revealed in verse 26. “Considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.”

What could possibly have influenced one to go through suffering with God’s people instead of enjoying all that the world system could possibly offer? [What was this world system offering to Moses anyway?

History strongly suggests that Moses was saved from Pharaoh’s intended fate by Hatshepsut, the young daughter of Thothmes I (who had ordered the destruction of the Hebrew male babies - Ex. 2:5-10). Moses then became her adopted son (Acts 7:21). Scholars tell us that this Pharaoh had a son, who because he was physically and mentally handicapped, was considered incapable of assuming the royal prerogatives to which he had been born. When he ascended the throne as Thothmes I, his sister Hatshepsut became regent and actually ruled the country. Thothmes II eventually died without a legitimate heir, but because both his father and sister had foreseen this lack of a successor, they probably had determined long beforehand that Moses would be the eventual heir. So from earliest years Moses had been educated with this in mind, as Stephen declares: “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22).