By Faith Moses (Part B)

There's something tragic when that pet becomes more important than people. When that pet is the source of your joy and comfort and relief, watch out. Satan is playing you if you're drifting into these waters and it happens.

It happens enough to sound the warning. He's a pet. Don't forget that. Because there are those again that are more concerned with pets and animals than the salvation of souls. And that is tragedy if you are a Christian. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Hebrews.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now here's Pastor Rick in Hebrews chapter 11 as he continues his message by faith Moses. Satan hasn't singled you out alone and God hasn't forgotten you. Satan singles out every believer. God never forgets. He says, I'll be with you.

I'll never leave you nor forsake you. And again, we either commit ourselves to accepting that or struggling against it. Therefore he is saying to them, be strong against the threats and the taunts of those who don't like your faith. Do you love it?

If they don't like it, do you need their acceptance? Verse 24, now he says by faith, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Now this is the faith of Moses. When he became of age, 40 years old.

We know that again from Stephen's sermon in Acts chapter 7. Now when he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. Here is Moses raised in Pharaoh's court. Every material thing that he could want at his age was there for him.

Every opportunity to do something with it was there for him. He was raised under the influence of Egypt more than anything else. This life of Moses in Egypt for 40 years, in Midian for 40 years, and then in the wilderness for 40 years, 120 years of life of Moses. And you look at that and you say, how would I have performed under those circumstances? Well, he wasn't the only one. There were others with him that had very similar circumstances.

He continues in verse 24, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter because he realized where he truly belonged. It was not instant for him. But when he realized it, he embraced it. Even that, even that was a struggle for Moses. He understood where he belonged in this life.

He just didn't know how to go about doing it, and he didn't do it well at the start. I think this full-blown refusal to be identified with the people who worship cats was significant. Now, it's kind of humorous, is it not? That's what the Egyptians did. They worshiped cats. Well, there were other things too, but cats were the big one.

We have people today who aren't far from that. And nothing wrong with loving your pet, and nothing wrong with benefiting from what they have to offer. There's something tragic when that pet becomes more important than people. When that pet is the source of your joy and comfort and relief, watch out. Satan is playing you if you're drifting into these waters, and it happens.

It happens enough to sound the warning. He's a pet. Don't forget that. Because there are those, again, that are more concerned with pets and animals than the salvation of souls. And that is a tragedy if you are a Christian.

If you're not a Christian, you've got a whole bag of tricks that need to be thrown out and have Jesus Christ put in its place. Well, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. And again, remember we talked about Joseph. Joseph said, my dead bones don't belong here in Egypt. They belong in the land that God has promised me.

And many types come out of that. One of them is my soul does not belong to this life in this world. It belongs in heaven with the Lord.

That is my home. I am a pilgrim, not of this world, because of the Spirit of God that lives in me. Remember when Moses was called, at first he was reluctant. He didn't want the call. He flat out told God, can you get somebody else?

He really did. And God said, no, you're it. And so Moses started off, okay, I'm going to do it. Told Jethro, the tribal chieftain, I'll be leaving back to Egypt. It was his responsibility to do that. But then he sort of tinkered around and God had to give him a second command. It's time to go. And then even then on the way, he neglects his duty as the head of the home, refuses, or for whatever reason, he doesn't circumcise his son.

Zipporah, his wife has to do it. And you are a bloody husband to me. She was totally hot over that matter. The point, yeah, my wife's never been hot at me.

Maybe some of you, I can look at you and tell. The point of the whole thing is that Moses was reluctant. He gradually came into that. And so for you who are Christians who are still struggling with your identity in Christ, understand, you're not alone. But struggle with that identity should eventually be satisfied.

You should overcome it and find out who you are in Christ. For we Christians, God wants us, He wants our identity to be set in truth. He wants it to be set in love, in modesty, in separation from the world, in freedom without recklessness.

We fail there a lot, do we not? Some Christians, they are so free that they are sinning. They are reckless with their freedom. We are free to obey. Obedience counts, incidentally. 1 Corinthians 10, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but not all things build me up. Not all things edify. Later, he repeats that again, Paul does, and he says, not all things are edifying for me, and I will not be brought under the power of the things that I am free to be brought under the power of outside of Christ.

I'll be careful. In verse 25, he says about Moses, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. Well, he could have just had a good old time in the palace with the Egyptians, and we may ask the question when we look at this beginning of verse 25, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God. Well, why do God's people suffer affliction? If He's this good God, great God, and all of these things He says He is, why does He not insulate us?

Well, He will, just not yet. Right now, it rains on the just and the unjust alike. It's about we identify with sinners because we are one. Saved by grace, albeit, but sickness, all right, I can understand that. How about anxiety? Why do Christians have anxiety?

Jesus said, fear not, over and over again. And yet, we find ourselves struggling from time to time with it. Dissatisfaction, ooh, that's a sinister one. That creates critics, not Christians.

We criticize God, we criticize His house, His people, anything we can get our views plastered over, we'll take the shot if we're not careful. Envy, what about that one? Keeping up with somebody else, why do they get to have the blessing?

Why does he or she or this? Meanness, ooh, that one comes so easy to Christian, you'd think it was one of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt be mean. Outburst of wrath, sexual lust, greed, worldliness, doubt, shallowness, being wronged by life, being wronged by others, being wronged by yourself. I've hit everybody in this room, including me.

Me, my problem is I get sick of being right all the time. I'm telling the story, what am I supposed to say? Choosing rather to suffer affliction, rather to identify with God's people no matter what happens. Let me ask you, will you serve the God who you know is there even if you think He doesn't care? Will you still serve Him?

Is He worth that? Is He that true, that when you think He doesn't care, you're going to serve anyway? What do you think Job did? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. When Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac, he trusted God, knowing that God had this under control.

Even if he had to go through whatever it was he was called to go through. And so to suppose that being a child of God eliminates affliction is to prove your ignorance of the faith, of the word, of what the messages in the Scriptures are to us. Faith operates with enough revealed truth. I just need enough of it. Jesus said this faith is quite powerful.

You just need a little bit to move a mountain. You know, getting that little bit is not easy it seems, but it's there. And so faith enough to trust the revealed truth of God, that's what propels the believer. That's what causes us to choose rather to suffer with God than to please the flesh. He says then to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin there in verse 25. Well, sin appeals to us because we're sinners.

And you just can't turn that off. It's going to be a struggle all our lives. What's our response to it? That's what matters. And so we read verses like this because the apostles struggled with it in their own lives. He says, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world.

It's not approved conduct. No one can deny that sin, particular sins, is fun right up to the point of impact, right up to the point when that serpent's tail or scorpion's tail stings you. And you find out, oh, that's why God prohibited sin. And we see it in this society, our personal appetite for sin, passing pleasures. You have to meet them head on.

You cannot deny that they're there. You just have to formulate a response, a lifelong response to them in Christ and swing away, go to your grave battling against personal sin as well as the lies of Satan and the world. Verse 26, I want to also, before I forget, I see I should mention this. Sin will always find some way to serve self at the exclusion of God. That's sin.

What is in it for me? Never mind God. I know he prohibits this, but I like it.

Well, that's not justification. That's temptation. Lead me not into temptation. That prayer is saying to God, I'm not big enough for these things. I don't have it in me. I have to come to you because yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory.

And even if I fall, you can restore. Verse 26, continuing his discussion on Moses, highlighting his behavior, he says about Moses, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he looked for the reward. Well, he felt the ridicule that he received by being with the people of God was acceptable. Even if the people did not accept God, it was good with him. God was good with him and so was his people. So he's reminding again that the first century Jewish believers of Jesus Christ, that they needed to pay attention to this fact that Jesus Christ of the New Testament is Yahweh of the Old Testament because it says, esteeming the reproach of Christ.

Wait a minute. How could Moses have esteemed the reproach of Christ when Christ Jesus, when Jesus was not born for another almost 1,500 years? The virgin birth is far away. You see, the writer equates Yahweh with Christ.

That's what he's telling us. This is a staggering amount of Bible theology and just that phrase, esteeming the reproach of Christ in the life of Moses. This is correct theology. It rebuffs those who use the Bible to deny that Jesus is God the Son. What makes you a Christian is you know who Jesus is. What makes you not a Christian is you don't know who he is. You're contradicting who he says he is in his scripture. The Holy Spirit says here and elsewhere that he is equal with Yahweh. John chapter 5, you know, there will be those that, well, Jesus never said he was God.

Oh, yeah, he did. The Pharisees understood it that way. We'll take just this one, John chapter 5. Therefore, the Jews sought all the more to kill him because he not only broke the Sabbath but also said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. See, the context is saying he is not God the Father, he is God my Father. I come from him as humans come from human fathers.

I come from a divine father, directly. And they knew that that is what he was saying. And, of course, you would think this would be the proverbial silver bullet to the argument when Paul says of Jesus Christ, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. Well, how do you do that unless you're equal with God and accept it? That's Philippians 2.6. So what makes the Christian a Christian is they know who God is. They know who the Son is. We know who Jesus is.

We're not foggy about this. If you say, you know, if you want to line up with the Unitarians and you want to line up with the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons, well, then you go do it. But you will be outside of the revealed Word of God. He says greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. He knew that, you know, when payday would finally come, what God had to give was better than what Egypt could ever give. And Moses had it all. Being born in Pharaoh's house, he was a prince. He did not lose it all. He threw it all away.

It was a big difference. Acts chapter 7, again Stephen speaking, and Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and deed. There are some that believe there's evidence in the historical accounts that Moses was indeed the crown prince to become Pharaoh because Pharaoh's other children were not able to take on that position.

Well, we don't have to have that information settled one way or the other. We have what Stephen says that he was mighty in words and deeds. So at 40 years old in Egypt, he had it all. He did not walk away from a barn. He walked away from a palace to go live in tents for the rest of his life.

A remarkable man. The wealth of archaeological information that has come to us by their unearthing the treasures of the Pharaohs speaks to us of what kind of wealth we're talking about was at the fingertips of Moses. I mean, they buried, they entombed these Pharaohs with all this wealth. Having so much more, they could spare it.

They could entomb gold. And this stands out to us because we as Christians sometimes think we may have given up something in the world that we should have held onto. And God says no. Moses got out and he took two million people with him. And that was a great work.

So why? How did he do it? Well, it tells us again, verse 26, where he looked to the reward. He knew there was something more to this life than what is here. This can't be it. If this is it, we're in trouble.

No one can keep it. Philippians, I mean, it's a lengthy quotation of scripture. Maybe I should ask you, turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 3, verse 7, because this is that important to the text that we are reading. So I'll sort of give us a commercial while you're turning the pages and just chatter about things until I think you're there. This section of scripture, if you're not familiar with it, you need to be familiar with it.

If you can memorize portions of it, you will do well. This is the apostle Paul. He's in jail when he writes to the Philippians. The Philippian church was a good church.

It was a solid church. He sort of confides and he opens up his heart to them. He says, what things were gained to me, these I have counted lost for Christ. Well, that's what Moses did, esteeming Christ more than the riches of the world. He continues in verse 8 of Philippians chapter 3, yet indeed I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having my own righteousness, that is self-righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know him in the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings be conformed to his death if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. It's powerful. I'm going to read a little bit more from there, but this man Paul was saying, I'm going to stare death down.

I mean Rome may kill me. That's all right. I hold more in my possession than this life, and he lived it out. And then he says, not that I've already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that which Christ Jesus laid hold of me.

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the mark for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. That's what faith looks like. Why can't I live that way for Christ?

Well, let me tell you, I usually don't say that, but I'm going to tell you. It's the pursuit of righteousness that matters so much. The world does not pursue the righteousness of God.

We do. It's a separating, it's a distinguishing feature about believers that we're hot on the trail of righteousness that's come down from heaven. What attacks us are our urges. The flesh, the sin, it pulls us, it competes, it challenges us.

Many Christians succumb to those things without losing their faith. And so, we know I'm going to build up the spiritual man. If I've got any chance of living like the saints of the scripture, of living the life that's going to please God, I better go at it with a serious mind. Verse 27, by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. He forsook Egypt, again left behind everything that this world had to offer for the things that God was calling him to. He says, not fearing the wrath of the king.

His parents did that. He followed the example of godly parents. When he says not fearing the wrath of the king, he's not talking about when he slew the Egyptian and was found out and then ran to Midian. He's talking about that Exodus exchange with Pharaoh. And Pharaoh was huffing and puffing and saying all these things. Moses was not moved by that. He was focused on the outcome. He was simply being obedient. He knew what he was supposed to do and he went about trying to do it.

That works. It works wonderfully for the believer. If you can stay focused on what God has called you to do, then do that and God will be with you and there will be struggles nonetheless.

Don't become shallow. Don't become one who feels that you should be insulated because you walk with the king. There comes a time when we're not standing in front of the burning bush but in front of Pharaoh. There are times in this life when we're not having a Bible study and increasing our knowledge but we're putting it to work.

Those times are almost always not pleasant and that's when it counts. Those severe tests when we say to the Lord, though he slay me, I will trust in him. You see, God does not have to rescue me from affliction to be my God. He is God by reason of truth and I subject myself to that. I am one of his subjects and that means I am determined to please him in spite of circumstances. Your failings does not disqualify you from that. Your walking away would but not your falling down, not the hits that you take, not the thoughts that pass through your head. Have you ever had, has someone ever provoked you to think thoughts that were unworthy of Christ?

I'm sure. Moses was such a man. They provoked him and he took the bait and they were the people of God and you know and I always say this, don't tell God I think this way but I side with Moses according to the flesh, not the spirit of course.

I'm with God all the way but I understand, I understand what they put the man through and he finally reached a point where he says I've had it with you. You want water? Take the water.

He beats the rock. God confronted him on that. He allowed the water to come out. He didn't withhold it on behalf of the people and then he says to Moses, Moses come over here.

What a painful experience. It should put fear in all of us to watch our step with God's people. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews right here on Cross Reference Radio.