Hebrews Lesson 188 February 25, 2010

^NKJ Isaiah 41:10 Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'

Open your Bibles to Hebrews 11, and we are down to verse 23. We'll just pick up a little bit to review some of the things that we went over last time to kind of get brought back up to speed and then hit a couple of new things. I want to make some comments I left out last time I want to make sure I cover.

Back in Genesis 15 in the Abraham Covenant, God had promised to Abraham as part of the covenant that there would be a time when the descendants of Abraham would be out of the land. He had just reaffirmed the promise to give Abraham the land.

^NKJ Genesis 15:13 Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.

This isn’t a precise number; it just gives a round number. Then afterward they would come out with great possessions. This of course refers to the time in Egypt after Joseph and his brothers moved down there with Jacob; and then they were there for 400 years leading into the period of slavery when a new pharaoh came into power that as the Scripture says did not know Moses.

This is something that has always intrigued people trying to discover just who the pharaoh of the Exodus was. Last time I looked at a little bit of this. This is the list of the 18^th dynasty that I put upon the screen last time. It is generally assumed that it was during this time period that the Exodus occurred. This was a time of Egyptian ascendency of power, especially during the time of Thutmose III who had co-regency with his mother Hatshepsut and also during the time up of Amenhotep IV and later on in this dynasty.

Last time I pointed out that even though there is a traditional or conventional Egyptian chronology, it is not at all certain. In fact if you go out and you do research on the Internet, you will find that there are a number of other folks who have done work on these chronological problems and there are even a few who will put the Exodus as early as 1520. These are not coming from a liberal viewpoint. There are those who are just trying to wrestle with the numbers because anything earlier than 700 BC really isn't as set as the museums and the archaeologists and the writers of textbooks would like us to think. Most of the time when you pick up a book on the Exodus, or you pick up a book on any number of topics, they will identify Thutmose III as the pharaoh who banished Moses and at his death Moses was able to come back and Amenhotep II then would be the pharaoh of the Exodus.

As I pointed out last time there are a number of different problems that we have just in looking at conventional chronology because most conventional chronology would put the earliest dynasties of Egypt before the flood. Biblically speaking, looking at the numbers, taking everything at face value; we have a flood somewhere around 2500 BC. Conventional dating would put the first dynasty in Egypt around 2900 BC. There is this problem of about 387 years or where you have an Egyptian civilization before the flood occurred which would not take place. The flood would wipe out any evidence of it. That's part of a problem.

Then I went through this slide showing these are some of the bedrock dates that people go to: 664 BC is a date related to Ashurbanipal’s invasion of Thebes. And that's a set date; 925 is the time when Shoshank I invades Israel (925 BC). This is a time often equated with the biblical Shishak; but there are problems with the names there - also calendar names, other things of that nature, so we're just not certain who or what these dates are. We can't really hang anything there.

Then I developed this little diagram to show that if there's any change whatsoever and these individuals are not at the time that they are thought to be in terms of the conventional dates (which are the numbers in white); if there's the least little shift, then they moved off further down to the right and they come after. Now this is a chronology that is similar to the one that Immanuel Velikovsky. Some of you listened to Charlie's framework series and have heard him refer to Immanuel Velikovsky, who wrote back in the 40’s and 50’s and had some really fascinating interesting things to say about chronology. In his view the 18^th dynasty came late so much later that Hatshepsut would be at the time of Solomon. He believed that Hatshepsut was the Queen of Sheba. He argues what seems to be a very convincing date.

One of the things to note about Velikovsky’s approach was he basically was thinking that because in Egyptian chronology, instead of seeing the dynasties all one after another, certain dynasties overlap or were simultaneous. You have a Northern Kingdom in the delta and a Southern Kingdom further up the Nile where you had two dynasties at the same time such as the 21^st and 22^nd dynasty overlapping. Instead of the 22^nd dynasty following the 21^st dynasty, they ruled that the same time. If you had a number of situations like that, then you would actually have a situation where traditional or conventional Egyptology would have as much as 500 years too many in their chronology. So you take 500 years out of that conventional chronology. You would end up putting a scenario similar to the one I have up on the screen.

Part of the problem I have with that approach was – and that was revised by a man named David Rohl in a book that came out in the 90’s called Pharaoh’s and Kings. The Discovery Channel had a great little series on it. There were two or three others who came out of a Velikovsky study group in the 70’s – is that they realized that the 500 years of Velikovsky was just too much. There were 2 or 3 others that came up with alternate schemes; but they would say there were around to a 200 to 350 years that were added to Egyptian chronology that needed to be taken out. Part of the problem with that is that if what happens at the Exodus occurs as Scripture says, then you have the complete destruction of the Egyptian army. You have a complete destruction of their complete infrastructure that wipes out their families, wipes out their herds. There is just economic, social, political, and military devastation that they don't recover from for 300 or 400 years. So if this is the scenario, then you have Ahmose and Hatshepsut and Thutmose coming on the scene with a tremendous amount of Egyptian power way to soon. They would be coming in during the time of the period of the judges and it’s not until late in the period (and not really until you get to the time of Solomon) that Egypt is mentioned again after the Exodus as a significant power. Egypt isn’t mentioned at all during the period of the conquest or during the period of the judges. That would indicate they were wiped out.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are problems with history and archaeology as it is put together conventionally. That is because of a number of factors that influence secular archaeologists and historians in much the same way that these same presuppositions affect evolutionists and others who deny the accuracy and literal value of the Scripture. They start with the evidence of archaeology and they start with the evidence in the rocks. They try then to make the Bible fit what they think they have found historically rather than starting with the Scripture as the absolute pattern and then working from an absolute standard to the data.

It's the same problem that you have basically with the charismatic Pentecostal movement: that instead of evaluating the experience by the Bible, you're evaluating the Bible by your experience; except in this case it’s your experience with the rocks and the remains that are found archeologically. If you look at data from archaeology, it would appear that the Noahic flood could not have occurred any later than about 4,000 to 5,000 BC because of the way they date various levels of civilization that they found in the Middle East and in other places.

When I was in seminary I remember sitting down having a lengthy discussion about this with Al Ross who at the time was the chairman of the Old Testament Department at Dallas. Al was one of those brains that they often produced at Dallas. He had his doctorate from Dallas and his second doctorate from Cambridge. He had written his doctoral dissertation at Dallas on the Table of Nations in Genesis 11. That was his specialty: all of the genealogies and everything.

I had raised the question: are there gaps in the genealogies in either Genesis 5 or Genesis 11?

He said, “Well, on the basis of exegesis there can’t be gaps. It's a locked genealogy.”

Whenever you have numbers that so-and-so lived 130 years and begat so-and-so; then their son lives 85 years and begets the next generation; those numbers lock down. Even if you're skipping a generation between father and son (It’s really father and grandson) it still has to occur within those numbers, within a 130 years or 80 years. So there can’t be gaps there.And if there are no gaps in genealogies, then you end up with a creation date of the 6 days of creation in Genesis 1 somewhere around 4,000 to 5,000 BC just as Usher developed it back in the 17^th century.

Usher was one of the most brilliantly educated men of his day. His name is dragged through the mud today by many people, who reject the young earth view, or reject a biblical view of recent civilization, or worldwide flood around 2500 BC; but he took the numbers in a literal fashion. All of this is just to say that when you read - and it's important to read things just to be aware of the discussions that are going on and that even among conservative biblicists who try to take the numbers accurately, there are things we just don't know. There's more that we don't know that we can be sure of.

There are articles that are written by the Associates of Biblical Research. This is a group that produces a journal called Bible and Spade.

Here is the website page. This is an article by Douglas Petrovich. I’m not familiar with who he is on Amenhotep II and the Historicity of the Exodus Pharaoh, this is just one of the articles. He argues for Amenhotep II as being the pharaoh of the Exodus, and he also believes he was not killed in the Exodus event, whereas one of the other articles here by Bryant Wood on recent research on the date the Exodus argues that he was killed. That shows the difference.

These guys are very conservative and they produce really great articles about a lot of different things. You should be familiar with it and bookmark it on the Internet and go look at some other articles. I have mine set up with RSS feed so I get the things they post every week and can keep up with things. This is a good article dealing with the different issues related to the date and the setting of the Exodus; whether it is a late date which is a liberal view with Ramses or whether it is an early date, some of the different things that are there. But both of them will argue for a conventional (pretty much a conventional) Egyptian chronology.

Now what's interesting if you read through this article that one of the things that he points out is that later on in history the pharaohs in the Old Testament are named. You have Pharaoh Neco and a couple of other pharaohs that are given names. But in the Exodus account, there's no mention of the name of pharaoh. He’s just called the king of Egypt or the pharaoh. What he argues is that in the literature of the 18^th dynasty in the time period of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, whenever they wrote their war stories (whenever they have gone out and conquered the enemy), they never identified the kings. That was how they wrote. That was their style at that time in history. It was to simply refer to their enemies as the king of so-and-so without identifying them by name. But on several hundred years later (300 or 400 years later) that was not the case.

And so the fact that Exodus is written in such a way that the pharaoh was never identified (no one’s name is given) fits the time period of this midpoint in the 18^th dynasty. It is things like that that archaeologists have to struggle with as they try to figure out who the pharaoh of the Exodus was.

One other article that I want to make a comment on - because this comes up every year at least once if not 5 or 6 times - and this is the view that there's a crossing that has been found down across the Gulf of Aqaba where there's land bridge (a shallow area with a land bridge) going from the Sinai Peninsula across to Saudi Arabia and that there've been a number of things found over in Saudi Arabia that indicate that this is where Mount Sinai was and this is really where God gave the law to the Israelites and where they crossed the Red Sea wasn't on the western fork but the eastern fork port of the Red Sea which is the Gulf of Aqaba.

Gordon Franz actually got his undergraduate training and is close friends with Dr. Steve Austin who's going to be our evening speaker at the Chafer Conference in a couple of weeks. They have known each other for 20 or 30 years. Gordon has written a number of articles that I've read over the years and I have always appreciated. He's an excellent scholar and archaeologist. Last year he was heading up the project in Jerusalem where they were sifting the remains of all the rubble that had been torn up and taken to a dump by the Arabs when they were excavating (building out) this underground mosque up on the Temple Mount. We had hoped to volunteer and go and spend part of a day helping to sift through the rubble looking for remains and it happened that the day that we had available was a Shabbat so his team was off on that day. So they weren’t working.

But this is a very good article and you've probably seen this e-mail come across. I see it like I said anywhere from 1 to 5 times a year where you have these pictures of chariot wheels and maps and everything. It describes the fact that they actually found these remains and they haven't. It goes back to a Seventh Day Adventist adventurer by the name of Ron Wyatt, who has been discredited by the Seventh Day Adventists and he has been discredited by every legitimate archaeologist. He claims to have found the Ark up in a certain area of northern Iraq. He has made a number of these other claims. He claimed to know where the Ark of the Covenant is, and all these things. But of course nobody has ever seen the real evidence for that.

Then there were a couple of others that came along including Bob Cornuke, someone else who's name I can’t remember. But this stuff gets recycled every couple of years and I always have to go back. I keep a bookmark of this particular article and then I started e-mailing it to everybody. Don’t listen to this. Don’t pay attention to it. Read the article. This isn't good archaeology. So this is a good article to have and to read to see some of the issues that are involved in this.

Now when we get into Hebrews 11, there are 5 events that are emphasized by the writer of Hebrews in Moses’ life. As he is illustrating his thesis, it is by faith, by trusting in the propositional revelation of God where God has made a promise (a specific statement) that the patriarchs (the Old Testament believers) hung in there. They were steadfast. They endured. They did not grow weary and fall out (fall by the wayside.) They were not tragedies on the spiritual road to honoring God. There were times in all their lives, sometimes many times, when they were failures; but at key points they trusted in God.

The two people that are emphasized the most in this chapter are Abraham and Moses. The interesting thing if you read through the original in the Greek is that the writer gets a little more excited as he is developing Moses. The sentences become shorter. His clauses become a little terser. You can tell that he is building to a crescendo in his argument, in the evidence that he gives. If you look ahead a little bit by the time he gets down to verse 32 he runs through Gideon, Barak, Sampson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets all in one verse. He is speeding up as he is dealing with his particular subject.

But before he gets to where he just throws out a list of names, he’s going to go through these 5 events in the life of Moses. The first doesn't have anything to do with Moses’ faith, it has to do with his parents’ faith. The second, third, fourth, and fifth have to do with Moses’ obedience to God and his trust in God.

I was thinking this week as I was re-reading the first half of Exodus again when God told Moses when He had appeared to Moses in Midian in the burning bush and was commissioning Moses to be the deliverer for the Israelites in Egypt and He told Moses that he would perform various miracles. He told him to throw his staff down on the ground. He threw his staff down on the ground and the staff turned into a poisonous cobra or viper of some kind. Then he told Moses reach down and grab it by its tail. That didn't make Hebrews 11. That would have been the first thing that I would put there – by faith Moses grabbed a serpent by the tail. That's the last thing I ever want to do is to touch a snake. That is not something that I think would be an easy thing to do. Parting the Red Sea – sure! Challenging pharaoh, waiting on the 10 plagues, okay. But reaching out and picking that serpent, that would really stretch my faith. That’s where my test would be.

So we begin in Hebrews 11:23 with the birth of Moses.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king's command.

Now this is basically just picking up phrases and descriptions about Moses from either Exodus 2 or Acts 7 in describing Moses’ birth.

A couple things that we ought to note in terms of translation is the phrase “when he was born” is a translation of the aorist passive participle of genethes which without the article indicates that it’s some sort of adverbial participle. But as an aorist participle it would precede the action of the main verb. And, it’s translated correctly as a temporal participle. But they didn't hide him when he was born; they hid him after he was born. This is such an elementary issue and many translations do that: “when he was born they hid him.” No, they hid him after he was born. This is basic Greek translation 101. First you are born; then you are hidden. It just makes common sense. Sometimes the obvious gets lost because traditionally something was always translated a certain way.

“So by faith Moses, after he was born was hidden three months by his parents.”

It is his parents’ faith. It is their act of hiding him that is the act of faith, and their trust in God. Now we have seen in our study of Scripture again and again and again is that the Bible never talks about just some sort of stand alone, autonomous, no strings attached faith that is just faith in faith.

Often you have people who make comments. They see a friend or co-worker going through difficult times and they’ll say, “Just believe!”

Just believe what? Is it just faith that makes you strong or is it faith in something? What does faith apprehend? Faith always has an object. You always believe something; and it’s what you believe that has significance. It’s not just the act of faith.

What is it that the parents of Moses are believing? We're not told. It doesn't say what it is that they are believing. But Josephus in his Antiquities relates that it was the common Jewish understanding that God had given a vision to Moses father Amram related to Moses being the deliverer of the Israelites from their Egyptian bondage. This is also seen in a number of other rabbinical commentaries.

Now all we have in the Scripture are basically two references to the birth of Moses. The first is in Exodus 2:1-2.

^NKJ Exodus 2:1 And a man of the house of Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi.

^NKJ Exodus 2:2 So the woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him three months.

Now this is then alluded to by Stephen in Acts 7:20 where he says that at this time Moses was born and he was well-pleasing to God. He is interpreting the word that is translated in the Greek Septuagint back here as a beautiful child. He translates that in terms of beauty in relationship to God. The Greek word that is used in the Septuagint translation is the same word that Stephen uses in Acts 7:20 and that is the word asteios. This was a word that has a rich history in Greek language. It originally had the idea in classical Greek of referring to someone who was polite, well bred, and who lived in a city as opposed to a country bumpkin. That was it an original meaning, but then it came to be applied to anyone who was attractive in terms of their physical appearance, someone who can rapport themselves well. The focus was on the physical attractiveness, and in the Greek world that had to do with physical proportions and things of that nature. But Stephen is using the term in Acts 7 in a character sense. At the time Moses was born, he was well pleasing to God, indicating that God had a plan and a purpose for Moses.

I believe that because of all the patterns that we see in Scripture even though there isn't a specific reference to a special revelation to Amram about this son, it would seem that that would have taken place. Every other instance of faith in Hebrews 11 is related to faith in a specific revelation and a specific promise of God. It's just that in this case that has not been given to us in terms of the specific.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king's command.

Now this is important to understand because the connection between faith and fear is crucial. When you have faith, fear doesn't operate. When you have fear, faith is not operational. Faith and fear are mutually exclusive because faith is focusing on the provision of God; ultimately the provision of a loving God who has graciously given us everything we need as 2 Peter says.

^NKJ 2 Peter 1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,

That is a term related to the spiritual life. God has given everything to us out of love. That's why 1 John says perfect love casts out fear because we understand the love of God and what He has provided for us in His grace and that we can rely upon that by means of faith, trusting in God’s provision. That means that we are not afraid. We can even pick up poisonous serpents by their tail … but only when I have special revelation from God! No other circumstances will work out.

I remember when I was a kid at Berachah. Back in those days when we had a youth group. Bob had come to know – I think his name was John Worley who's the director of the Houston Zoo pretty well. They had a survival night one night. So they had a thing for all of the teenagers. I was about 15 at the time. All the 14, 15, 16 year old guys were down front. Worley had brought a bunch of different animals from the zoo. He was giving demonstrations and there was this burlap sack down there that was making all kinds of movements. He reached over and picked it up and dumped it out. Three or four rattlesnakes came out and of course he had them under complete control. But there was a whole group of boys that were right there on that front row leaning over that front barricade there who in just one movement sort of elevated back about 3 rows as soon as they saw those snakes. That was a typical of my approach to snakes.

Bruce Cooper's brother Bobby, when we were growing up at Camp Peniel, was the first camper to always find a snake. Always, by the second day of camp he always had a black racer or a silver racer wrapped around him. I never could understand. There’s something wrong with that kind of mentality!

The second event in Moses’ life that does relate to his volition and to his faith is then spelled out in the next 3 verses. This relates to his decision not to be identified any longer with the pharaoh’s daughter, not to be identified with the aristocracy of pharaoh, not to be identified with anything Egyptian, but to be identified as an Israelite.

It is interesting to see how the writer of Hebrews interprets this in light of what the event that is alluded to here, back in Exodus 3. So we'll have to go back there to look in just a minute.

In Hebrews 11:24 we read:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:24 By faith Moses, when he became of age,

That's the New King James translation.

refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter,

^NKJ Hebrews 11:25 choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin,

^NKJ Hebrews 11:26 esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.

I remember the first time I've heard this passage taught. I think I was in college. This is one of those passages that just ought to hit every one of us right between the eyes. This is a tremendous statement here in terms of Moses maturity and his understanding of the truth of God's Word and His commitment to that truth. That's really what positive volition is. It is more than just a casual interest or curiosity in the study of the Bible. It is a recognition that the Bible is absolute truth. And if it is absolute truth, then nothing else matters and I need to be completely committed to what the Scripture says.

Now we’re all going to fail at times. I can't think of anyone who is probably more committed to the veracity of the Word of God and the faithfulness of God than David and David certainly messed up many times and significant and a majestic ways we might say. But he never lost his commitment to God. That's why God says he was a man after God's own heart. David was totally (completely focused) in his soul on serving God. That didn’t mean he was sinless. That didn’t mean that he didn’t make serious mistakes; but when you boiled it all down, that was David’s focus.

Moses came to this point where he had everything. He had education. He position. He had power. He had respect. He had anything and everything that anyone in the world at that time could possibly have. He couldn't look anywhere in the world for someplace to give him more respect, more prestige, more money, more pleasure. He had all of that and then he looked out on the Israelites, on his relations, on his ethnic cousins who were slaves in Egypt. He was so committed to the truth of God's Word and the reality of that as a living truth that he would rather be associated and identified with that no matter what it cost him than to take time to enjoy the transient or temporary pleasures of sin as verse 25 points out. That means that he has a tremendous understanding of God's Word, a focus and a strength of will and mental attitude that few people ever really have. That's why Moses was the great leader that he was.

Just a couple points in terms of the translation and exegesis of the passage, that verse begins with the same kind of construction that you have in verse 24.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:24 By faith Moses, when he became of age,

Actually it's the same kind of construction - should be translated “after he became of age” or “after he became an adult.” Literally it says, “after becoming great.” That is just an idiom for after becoming mature or after becoming an adult; reaching a certain stage that he made a choice.

After he became an adult (after he became mature)

refused

… the New King James says.

to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter,

The word there is the word arneomai. I learned something when I was studying that today. One of the sources I went to is that this is the antonym for homologeo. This is the opposite of homololego. Homologeo means to admit or acknowledge something to be true. Arneomai is to deny that something is true. It is to reject it or to renounce it. The best idea here is that he renounces everything that had come to him by virtue of being raised by pharaoh’s daughter. He just gives it all. The way the text presents this in Hebrews emphasizes his volition. Let’s just stop and hold our place in the text here and go to Exodus 3.

While you're doing that, I want to look at one other word that’s used here and that's the next word, which is translated choosing in verse 25. This is another participle and it’s the word eireo. When I saw this, I saw it was a rather odd word. It means to lift up or to take up. But it's in the middle voice which in Greek means to make a choice, to make a decision, to elect, to take a particular course of action. So the emphasis here is on Moses making an active decision. Then when we get down to verse 26, which in the New King James is translated “esteeming”. I’ve translated it down here. This is sort of a corrected or enhanced the translation. I translated it “because he thought” because this is the word hegeomai which is the word for thinking. It’s for reasoning. It’s for thinking through to a conclusion.

It’s a very rational word. He's not reacting emotionally. He's not jumping into something. He’s not emotionally identifying with his people. He hasn't done a genealogical search and suddenly discovered what his roots are and now he is going to go live with the people that he belongs to. It’s not this kind of emotional thing at all. It is a thought through, reasoned choice that he makes.

Now when you read most commentaries and they try to identify this with what happens in Exodus 3. So keep your place there in Hebrews so you don't get lost and let's go back to Exodus 3. Actually, it’s half way into chapter 2.

^NKJ Exodus 2:11 Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.

Now in the Septuagint, the language there, when Moses was grown is the same language that we have over there in Hebrews 11 when he became great. So that is what’s borrowed into the text there. This one reason why people go to this point.

when Moses was grown,

We know from other information that he was 40 years old when this takes place. Moses lived 120 years and his life is broken into 3 equal periods of 40 years, 40 years and 40 years. The first 40 years he’s a Prince of Egypt; the second 40 years he is in Midian as a shepherd out in the boonies; then last 40 years he is leading the Israelites through the boonies.

^NKJ Exodus 2:11 Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens.

This is indicating not a single event but a recognition (an identification) of their suffering, and the injustice that they are undergoing. This probably summarizes a process that took place as he's coming to recognition of his own identity and who he is the plan of God.

And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.

^NKJ Exodus 2:12 So he looked this way and that way,

He wanted to make sure nobody was looking.

and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

By the fact that he's hiding him in the sand (burying the body) indicates that he recognized (in fact he looked both ways to make sure nobody was looking) indicates that he knows that he knows what he was doing was wrong. But this act is not the act of the choice that’s referred to in Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11 indicates that he makes a clear thoughtful analysis of his circumstances and now he's going to identify himself with his brethren. This is more of a rash emotional sinful reaction to an injustice. They're not the same event although what surprised me was how many commentaries I looked at were trying to identify this event with his decision. I think he's already made the decision to identify himself with the Israelite's and then he recognizes the destiny that God has for him as the deliverer; but he doesn't have enough doctrine and humility yet to recognize that he needs to do it in the power of God. So he's going to do it in his own power. That is why he is starting with this one Egyptian that is beating an Israelite.

In verse 13 he comes back. The second day two Hebrew mean are fighting.

^NKJ Exodus 2:13 And when he went out the second day, behold, two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the one who did the wrong, "Why are you striking your companion?"

The other Hebrew said:

^NKJ Exodus 2:14 Then he said, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" So Moses feared and said, "Surely this thing is known!"

So it became known. There apparently were witnesses. Some one saw him trying to hide the evidence.

^NKJ Exodus 2:15 When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well.

Now if you read through those 5 verses, it looks as if Moses’ decision to leave is not a rational thought out decision; but he is simply escaping for his life as a result of a sinful choice and an emotional reaction and his attempt to carry out his role as a deliverer on his own.

There are two different issues. One is he comes to this decision on his own to fulfill his role. The second is he gets out of fellowship and tries to do it on his own. The result is that he has to depart with a posse right behind him.

So he heads to Midian, which is located somewhere in the southern area south of the land of Canaan. The Midianites were somewhat migratory; and so they're in the northern areas over into the Saudi Arabian peninsula. So this is why some people thought that Sinai was over in Saudi Arabia. Actually it is more in the in the Sinai Peninsula. It’s probably located not the very tip. I don’t have a map – maybe I do have a map down here at the end to put up here so you can see what I'm talking about. Here is the map here showing the Sinai Peninsula which is located right here. It’s this triangle with a point down at the bottom. These two bodies of water that go up on the eastside westside and then the east side are both part of the Red Sea. The leg on the right side is a Gulf of Aqaba. This is the area in here, which is where the Midianites, who were nomadic at the time lived. The traditional site for Mount Sinai is down here the very tip of the Sinai Peninsula; but I don't know of a single biblically committed archaeologist who thinks that that's where the real Mount Sinai was located. Most of them will choose one or two various sites up in the center part of the Sinai Peninsula primarily because of the distances that are given for the Israelites to travel from Sinai to Kadesh Barnea. Kadesh Barnea would be located roughly in this area.

This is the trouble with the one major problems with the view that the Sinai is located over here in the Saudi Peninsula is that it would take them too long to travel up to Kadesh Barnea. Even from the southern tip of the Sinai, it's too far for them to travel in the length of time that the Bible gives in order for them to make it to Kadesh Barnea. The site for Sinai was somewhere in the center of the Sinai Peninsula which would place Midian up in this area. Moses is going to lead from this area in Lower Egypt, head across the Sinai to the area of Midian.

Back to verses 24, 25 and 26. If we clean up the translation just a little bit, these verses are all one sentence in the original would read:

By faith Moses renounced.

That’s your main idea.

By faith Moses renounced his position as being identified as the son of pharaoh’s daughter.

That's the main thought. He is renouncing everything. Everything else that’s in here is secondary. He does it by:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:25 choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God

He would rather be identified with God than anything else.

than to enjoy the passing pleasures

…or, the transients pleasures.

of sin,

That's what's sin is. We think that we're going to get a lot of pleasure from it. But it's just instant gratification whether it is some sort of emotional release of anger or whether it is some other sin of the tongue such as, “Oh well, I just want to gossip about that person” or say this or say that and enter into a sin of the tongue or whether it is some other physical sin. We think that it is going to give us immediate pleasure. And it does! That’s the thing. Sin is really fun; but it's only fun for a short time.

I remember when I was in high school. I went on a ski trip with Camp Peniel and had a counselor who was a few years older than I; and he was giving a night-time devotion in the cabin and he was making some comment.

“Sin is just not fun at all.”

I said, “Yes it is! Sin is a lot of fun. It's fun for a short time.”

We got in a real argument, which went on for the 3 or 4 days we were on the ski trip. Five years later he left his wife for a younger woman. I've always wanted to ask him if sin was fun.

There is a pleasure there. The Scripture says so. But it is a transient pleasure. It is temporary. It is only for the moment.

The issue is thinking.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:26 esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt;

Isn't that interesting how the writer of Hebrews says this? The reproach of Christ – Christos is the translation of the Hebrew word Meshiach meaning the anointed one. So this indicates that Moses had a clear understanding of His role in terms of the promised Deliverer (the ultimate Deliverer) of Israel. He was the temporal deliverer during the time of the Exodus; but he understood something about a future Deliverer that would come. He thought that the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than the treasure of Egypt. That was greater treasure than just about anybody we could think of except perhaps Bill Gates or Howard Hughes or somebody in that category. He focuses not on the temporal pleasure; but he focuses on the future reward.

for he looked to the reward.

That's an explanation there in the Greek. It's not a cause. It’s not because he looked to the reward although it is close to that idea. But it’s explanation. How could he do this? Because he's focused on the reward. It’s that personal sense of our eternal destiny. It's understanding that we are putting off today gratification for today that may be tremendous in light of what we believe God has promised us in His Word that will take place in the Millennial Kingdom after this life is over with. So for him the promise of God is more real. The rewards related to his future destiny (a spiritual destiny in terms of God's plan) were more real to him than all of the tangible items that surrounded him in Egypt and in the court of pharaoh. No one had more power more at that time than the pharaoh did. The pharaoh was the incarnation of god in Egyptian culture. Whatever the pharaoh wanted, the pharaoh got. Moses as a prince of Egypt would have had access to anything that he wanted to satisfy any lust of his sin nature. Yet all of that is set aside because the reward was more real to him than that immediate gratification. That is a real sign of maturity.

I remember someone saying one time that the real sign of maturity (you can teach this to any adolescents in your sphere of influence) is the ability to postpone gratification. We live in a world today that basically preaches that we need to have immediate gratification of whatever we want rather than learning self-discipline and learning to postpone that.

Moses, because of his understanding of the plan of God, refuses to be identified as Egyptian royalty, identifies with the slaves and then he is going to leave Egypt. This is the next verse and we’ll come back and start their next time in verse 27.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king;

That just sounds so majestic to forsake something. Basically it means he left. He put Memphis in his rear view mirror and he headed Midian. We'll pick up with that next time because we come to that second half which is a tremendous statement.

for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

The word there is an unusual word in Greek. It’s not the word that we normally see for endurance; but it has to do with strength, for he was strong. He was unshakable because he saw the one who can’t be seen. Think about that. That's that personal sense of eternal destiny. He saw the one who can’t be seen.

Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes.

Illustrations