So faith accepts God's provision. You see, that's the difference between faith and works.
Works tries to work up its own provision. Faith just says, God did it, I believe. Faith always accepts God's provision, as well as God's plan. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Now consider this question, how likely would you be to trust God if He removed you from a life of the highest comfort and prestige, and instead placed you in obscurity and hardship in a desert for 40 years? Well, Moses faced that exact situation, and his obedience provides a compelling model for how you and I also should trust and obey God. Today's lesson is part of John MacArthur's study titled, The Power of Faith. But before the lesson, John, you were interviewed recently by Ben Shapiro, and over the years you've been on Larry King Live and other well-known interview programs. How do you prepare for those opportunities, and how is it that you always seem to know exactly the right thing to say? Well, I hope and pray that I know the exact things to say.
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that come into play in those environments. One is I've been studying the Bible a long time. My memory bank is loaded with the truths of Scripture that I've been teaching and preaching and studying at an intense level.
I mean, look, for what, 70 years I've been teaching the Bible. So somewhere in that memory bank is the right answer to any question. So at this particular point, I'm still able to retrieve that right answer because it's there, because I've put the Word of God in my heart.
Right. And over the years, you've done these live Q&As in the congregation at Grace Church. You've probably been asked every question that could possibly be considered. And yet it's different, isn't it, when you're in a national audience and in a live situation like that where, you know, millions of people are going to be listening. Do you not get nervous? I don't get nervous because I don't think the interviewer is going to ask me a question that I haven't thought about.
I don't think something's coming up that hasn't come up before, and I've been doing it a long time. But the second thing I would say is this. I know what I want to say, whatever the questions are. I want to say the Bible is the authority. It is the Word of God.
And Jesus Christ is the only Savior. So in any interview, I'm looking for where can I inject that? And sometimes I get a direct question that leads to that.
Sometimes I have to manipulate it a little bit. But yeah, I'm on the offense. I'm looking for the opportunity to proclaim the gospel. I've done two interviews with Ben. And the first one, he launched me into Isaiah 53.
And I think if I'm correct, I talked for 20 minutes without an interruption, which is pretty tolerant of him to let me go that long. And in this recent interview, again, he asked me the question, what should Christians think about Israel? What should the attitude of Christians be toward Israel?
That's a marvelous question. So I responded by saying, well, it should be the Apostle Paul's attitude toward Israel. I could almost wish myself a curse for the salvation of my people Israel. I said, my desire for Israel is not political, it's not sociological, it's not economic, it's not military, it's salvation.
My desire for Israel is that they come to know their Messiah and receive all the blessings promised in the Old Testament. Yeah, so I'm always looking for a way to establish biblical authority and the sufficiency of Christ as the only hope and the only Savior. And in the other cases of questions, I guess it's just that I've been doing it long enough. As I said a minute ago, I'm asking the Lord to keep the retrieval process moving because people ask me a lot of questions and I want to be able to get the answers up and out of the bank. Oh, you do a good job of that. Thank you, John. And friend, remember that Grace To You has many resources to help you fill your own mental bank with biblical truth. The lesson you're about to hear is one of them. So stay here as John continues his look at the power of faith. And we come to Moses and we have titled this section, The Decisions of Faith, or The Things Which Faith Accepts and Rejects. Faith is very decisive.
And as we saw last time, life is made up of decisions. In making these most important decisions, faith has to say no to some things. If you really believe God, you say no to certain things. And so you see, faith doesn't want the world's prestige and it doesn't care about the world's pleasure and it doesn't even care about the world's plenty. Another thing faith rejects, good, verse 27, this is a powerful point.
It rejects the world's pressure, the world's pressure. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. Now apparently, Pharaoh got uptight about Moses leaving. And that would have put a tremendous pressure on Moses, but it didn't get to him. He did not fear the wrath of the king.
He didn't let the pressure get to him. And believe me, Christians, Satan will try to pressure you into conforming to the system. Do you know that?
Of course you do. Satan will use all kinds of things like the pressure of friends who will say to you, what's the matter with you, man? And you'll get pressure at your job to do dishonest things. And Satan will pressure you and pressure you to conform you to the world. But as Philip's translation says in Romans 12, too, don't get squeezed into the world's mold.
That's what Satan wants to do. Now Moses didn't get pressure. You say, what were his pressures? Number one, the comfort of the palace.
How would you like to turn in the palace for living with the slaves? And what finally happened to him? Herding sheep in Midian. Running around the desert with a bunch of bleeding sheep.
You say, well, it was probably just a little while. Forty years of bleeding sheep. What else was the pressure? The pressure of pleasure. I mean, he had a happy-go-lucky kind of a deal.
He was really winging it in the palace. That was a pressure. The pressure of riches. The pressure of honor. He was somebody. He was fast going to become nobody.
Even with Israel, they rejected him when he arrived to be their leader. And then perhaps the pressure of debt. I'm sure back in his mind he realized that he owed something to Pharaoh's daughter for giving him the break that he got that led him to where he was. And maybe he felt pressure there. But he had pressure. But there's a greater pressure than all of this. And it's indicated in verse 27.
It's simply this. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king. The greatest pressure, I think, that Christians face in many, many cases is the pressure of a little word, F-E-A-R, fear.
Moses didn't fear. He abandoned Egypt, katalipin. And what it really means is he made a heart renunciation. It's not just a physical moving away. It's a heart renunciation. It's kind of like Matthew. It says in the Bible that Matthew forsook all and followed Jesus.
I think it's Luke chapter 5. And so it's literally turning his life around and going toward God. Moses just chucked Egypt as a system, as a way of life. Satan uses fear to neutralize people, but he didn't neutralize Moses. Proverbs 29 5, the fear of man bringeth what?
A snare. And you know, it worked on Abraham. Old Abraham got scared and told a lie about Sarah. And it worked on Isaac.
He was in the great heritage of his father. He got scared and told a lie about his wife, calling her his sister. Jacob was afraid and he was fleeing from Laban. Aaron was afraid and he yielded to the people and they made a golden calf.
Israel was afraid and fearing to attempt the conquest of Canaan. And they sent all those people in there and they got the grasshopper complex. And they came running out and said, oh, we'll never be able to handle that. There are big giants in there and we're like grasshoppers.
That's the grasshopper complex. Gideon's army was afraid and 20,000 of them got disqualified. Dishonorable discharge. David was afraid and he ran from Absalom. The disciples were afraid in the storm at the sea. Peter was afraid and he denied Jesus and you and I have been afraid and we've done just about all there is to do to deny Christ in fear, haven't we? Well, maybe you haven't stood up and rejected Christ verbally, but at least you haven't said anything that could possibly connect you with Him in times when you were pressured. And so fear is a real pressure.
And so many Christians melt and become as water at the threat of the loss of popularity or social status, afraid people are going to cut them off, look down on them, call them fanatics, persecute them or whatever. And so the devil uses fear, but it didn't work with Moses. Let's go back to look at Exodus chapter 5 for just a moment or two.
In Exodus chapter 5, you'll see how the devil attempted to pressure Moses. And boy, he was bold and the pressure didn't work. He didn't fear the king. I don't care what the king did or what the king said, he didn't fear him. It's a great lesson of faith. Faith, believe me people, doesn't fold under the world's pressure.
Why? Moses, it says, didn't fold because he saw him who is what? Invisible. In other words, he knew he had an invisible means of support. He knew that no matter what happened, whatever he faced, he would be held up.
He would be strong. And when you flake out on an opportunity to confront people about Jesus Christ, it's because you're afraid and you're afraid because you really don't trust the power of whom. Of God. If you trusted the power of God, is there anything to be afraid of?
That is so ridiculous. If you really believed God, you'd have nothing to be afraid of. So if you're afraid, you stop believing God. You've forfeited faith. Faith would say, I'll believe God and reject the world's pressure. But the Christian says, I don't know if I can believe God at this point. I'll just kind of fade.
That's the wrong decision. All right, chapter 5. Afterward, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go.
That's pretty bold stuff. He didn't worry about this guy. This was just Pharaoh, the chief ruler in all the world. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord.
Neither will I let Israel go. And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us. Let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert and sacrifice unto the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with a sword. Now he says, Pharaoh, here's what I want to do. I want to take all the children of Israel out of here for a three-day rest. Just a nice little deal out in the desert there.
Do you mind? Verse 4, And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works? Get you under your burdens. Who's going to carry on the brick making? We can't have that.
A halt in the production at this point would be disastrous. We've got to crank these pyramids out. So he says, No, you can't even get three days off with your gang. And of course, he knew in the back of his mind, you can imagine letting a million Israelites go out in the desert and a fat chance of ever getting them back. And Pharaoh was a little bit mad at this point. So in verse 6 it says, Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people and their officers saying, You shall no more give the people straw to make bricks as heretofore. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the number of the bricks which they did make heretofore you shall lay upon them. You shall not diminish anything thereof for they are idle. Therefore they cry saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. He said apparently they don't have enough work to do and they're getting all uptight on this religious thing. So in order to make sure they've got enough to occupy their time, make them produce the same amount of bricks, but make them hunt their own straw. Verse 9, Let there more work be laid upon the men that they may labor therein and let them not regard vain words.
Don't stand around talking. This guy is a real slave driver. Well, verse 10, The taskmasters of the people went out and their officers and spoke to the people saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go ye, get you straw where you can find it.
And yet not any of your work shall be diminished. So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw. They picked up what they could. Well, this kind of pressure could really have scared Moses off. Because you see, Moses was vying at this point to be the leader of Israel. And here he came back and he started unloading these orders on Pharaoh. And the more he said, the worse it got for Israel.
That's a pretty precarious place for the leader to be in, right? I mean, if you're going to lead the people you want them to believe in, and every time Moses opens his mouth it gets worse for us. But he wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid of his people.
He wasn't afraid of the king. He believed God and he spoke what God told him to say. Verse 13, The taskmasters hastened them saying, Fulfill your works. Your daily tasks is when there was straw. The officers of the children of Israel whom Pharaoh taskmasters had set over them were beaten and demanded. Wherefore have you not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and today as heretofore?
The process got slowed down so they beat the leaders of the Jews that they had elevated to be foremen. Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? There is no straw given unto thy servants.
And they say to us, Make brick. Behold, thy servants are beaten, but the fault is in thine own people. But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle. Therefore you say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord. You want to go out and worship.
You don't have enough work to do. Go therefore now and work, for there shall no straw be given you, yet you shall deliver the number of bricks. And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were an evil case.
After it was said, Ye shall not diminish anything from your bricks of your daily task. And they met with Moses and Aaron who stood in the way as they came forth from Pharaoh. And they said unto them, The Lord look upon you and judge, because you have made us offensive in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his servants to put a sword in their hand to slay us. Moses, you're messing up everything. And Moses returned unto the Lord and said, Lord.
I think that was his tone of voice. Wherefore hast thou so badly treated this people? Why is it that thou hast sent me? What are you trying to do to me, Lord? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people.
Neither hast thou delivered thy people at all. He has a little pressure there. It was tough. But he continued to believe God.
And if you start in chapter 6 and just keep going right on through. He did what God said. He kept going back and saying, Let my people go.
Let my people go. And the plague started. And one after the other, the river of blood, the frogs, the dust and the gnats, the flies, the death of domestic animals, the ashes, dust, boils, hail and fire, locusts, darkness, finally the death of the firstborn. And all through this Pharaoh was mad, Pharaoh was angry, and Moses never feared him for a moment. You say, How come he didn't fear Pharaoh? Because he saw one who was invisible, one infinitely more powerful than Pharaoh. Moses was the kind of man he was because he chose to focus his sights on God rather than on some petty, puny little monarch banging around in Egypt. Believe me, people, when we are afraid of the world, when we are afraid of what people will say, we are exposing ourselves to condemnation for a gross lack of faith. Who is our God?
You really believe that He can do it? Men of faith have always believed God and not worried about men. And Moses was like that and he endured as seeing one who is invisible. That's what faith rejects. It rejects the world's prestige, pleasure, plenty and pressure. Quickly, and this is simple because we've already covered it by contrast. What does faith accept?
What does it accept? First of all, it accepts the Lord's plans, the Lord's plans. Go back to verse 23, by faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents. Remember Amram and Jacobed, their names. Because they saw he was a, it says here, beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.
Here's the same kind of rejection of the world's pressure. They too weren't afraid. Now you remember that Pharaoh had put out a decree that all male Hebrew babies were to be killed.
And if a family didn't do that, they would be susceptible to execution themselves. That didn't bother Amram and Jacobed. They just took little old Moses for three months and stashed him somewhere in the house. They hid him. You say, well, weren't they afraid that the soldiers would find him and that they'd all lose their lives, the whole family? No, it says they never feared Pharaoh. They believed God. And the Lord's plan was regarding this little child. Now the word beautiful here is a key.
I want you to get this. It is goodly in Exodus 2, 2, and it is translated exceedingly fair in Acts 7 where Stephen is preaching and he says the baby was exceedingly fair. The literal Greek, listen to this, osteos totheo means this, fair unto God. The child was fair unto God.
What does that mean? It means that God had especially set his affection on this child. It doesn't mean that they hid him just because he was a good looking kid. There are a lot of nice little babies. Everybody's baby is beautiful to everybody.
And there wasn't any specific problem there. They were told by God. I believe this without a shadow of a doubt because they did it by faith and faith is always in something that God has said. And so they had been told by God, this child is fair unto me.
He is set apart for specific service. And they knew to hide the child. Now they could have sacrificed the infant and kept their own skin. They were willing to gamble as it were from the world's viewpoint with their own lives to do what God said.
It was no gamble at all because God always keeps His promise. And so without fearing, they took the child as God had told them to do and kept the child in the house for three months. Now that's not easy to hide a three-month-old baby. That thing gets noisy.
You know that. And it may have been finally he got such good lungs that they had to stick him in the boat and put him in the river. That may have become the pressure.
We don't know. But God must have told them about the destiny of this child, that He was fair unto him. And so by faith, trusting that God would preserve them and the life of little Moses, they hid him in the house three months.
You remember the story? They finally put him in the little basket, put him in the river, shoved him on down the river, and little old Miriam must have run down the beach all the way as the little thing floated down. And Pharaoh's daughter came down to take a bath and she found the little basket and then it was Moses. And when Miriam just happened to be around at the time, she said, You wouldn't know a Hebrew woman who could keep the child for a few years, would you?
Miriam said, Just have one that I'm well aware of. Didn't tell her, but it happens to be his mother. Scooped the little guy up and back to Jacob. Now you see, it took a lot of faith to keep that little child. It took a lot of faith to put the little child in the water and watch it go.
But you see what God did? God honored their faith by bringing the little baby right back and giving her the privilege and the joy of nursing and loving and cherishing and raising and teaching the baby Moses. And she was the one who formed him into what he was. She was the one who taught him the messianic hope, the promise of Abraham. She was the one who taught him everything that became fulfilled in his life as he led Israel.
Now you know something? It took a tremendous amount of faith to go out on a limb like that and to believe God to hide the baby and shoot it down the river like that. It took a lot of faith, but she obeyed God's plan even though it seemed bizarre and like it could never work. But don't you see how important it was that Moses not only be accepted by Israel, but by Egypt to make him into the man God wanted him to be? God has a plan, beloved, and His plan always works right if you obey it. And you don't need to try to help Him to reorganize it. Sarah tried to help God with a plan and the whole people known as the Arabs were produced from it.
A thorn in the flesh of Israel ever since. Don't try to help God. Let Him work His plans and you just obey.
It's like me taking a felt tip pen and going over to try to fix up the Mona Lisa a little bit. I don't want to...that's a masterpiece. You don't need to offer God any of your service to assist His plans. One thing is needful in the Christian life, beloved, it's a word we say over and over again.
It's simply the word obey, right? He makes the plans, we walk in them. And so, the parents of Moses illustrate the life of faith accepts God's plan. Doesn't matter what it is, you accept it.
You accept it. And they weren't afraid, they believed God. True faith, secondly, accepts the Lord's provision, not only the Lord's plan, the Lord's provision. Look at verse 28. Here's back to Moses. Through faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. Remember the last tenth plague? God said, now what's going to happen here is all the firstborn of animals and people are going to die. I'm going to come through the Lamb with the angel of death and every firstborn of the Lamb is going to die. Now, you know, a lot of people would hear that and say, oh sure, that's going a little too far. That could never happen.
That's just far out. Moses believed it. God said, but there's going to be a provision for you if you'll kill a lamb, and He gave him all the instructions about the Lamb, take the blood, put it on the doorposts, on the little cross piece on the top, put the blood there, the angel will come by, he'll see the blood and he'll pass by.
You know who put the blood up there? The people who believed God, right? And, dear ones, that became a beautiful picture of the blood of Jesus Christ, didn't it?
The judgment of God sweeps over civilization and it passes by all those who are covered with the blood of Jesus Christ. You see, Moses believed God for God's provision. It seemed a screwy thing to do. It seemed a strange thing to do at that point in their life. But God said to do it and they did it. Faith always accepts God's provision.
Moses didn't say, God, I've got a terrific idea if you want to add something onto that. How about if we all run around the block three or four times, God? We good? Or do four or five good deeds? Terrific. Hey, God, how about we get all out in a vacant lot and have a whole lot of holy rigamarole or something? I've got some terrific ideas, God, we could really...we could have a real great thing out of this. God made a provision and Moses didn't add anything to it.
He did it. God has made a provision for souls of men. It's the blood of Jesus Christ.
Don't add anything to it, just accept it. And when by faith you receive Jesus Christ, you've applied the blood of Christ. And that's why the Bible says there is no condemnation to them who are what? In Christ, Romans 8.1. So faith accepts God's provision. You see, that's the difference between faith and works.
Works tries to work up its own provision. Faith just says, God did it, I believe it. Faith always accepts God's provision as well as God's plan.
Thirdly and last, faith accepts God's promise. I love this, verse 29, by faith they pass through the Red Sea as by dry land which the Egyptians attempting to do were what? Drown. Now you remember how that happened? That sea just rolled up on both sides.
Hundreds and hundreds of feet deep. Okay? And they get down to the shore and they say, all right, we're going through. And somebody says, oh yeah? Who says it's going to stay? Who says that thing is going to stay up there?
Can you imagine? That took faith. And Moses said, God said it's going to stay. God said it's going to stay. Well, could you put it in writing, God? Could you flash it across the sky, you know?
I mean, like so many people, could you just do something to prove it? No, no. God said to Moses, just reach out over there and the seal part and it rolled back. And they were afraid and they really didn't have any choice. God often prompts your faith and He prompted their faith by the Egyptian army. I mean, they were standing on the edge of the thing, but the Egyptians were coming down hot and heavy across the mountains. And it was either stay and get massacred or move on by faith. They were full of fear and they saw the water. And Moses, you know what Moses said, stand still and see what? The salvation of the Lord. And that sea rolled up and they didn't stick around too long.
They took off. You see what faith does? Faith takes God at His word and is victorious. Presumption drowns.
The Egyptians presumed and they drowned. Listen, if you're waiting for a ferry boat to live the Christian life, it'll never come. If you're waiting for calm water, it'll never come. You're going to have to walk through with it all piled up on both sides and believe God that it'll stay there. Because the Christian life is a matter of believing God's promise. God says, I'll hold up everything for you to pass through in this world. Do you believe that? Do you believe anything can fall on the Christian to drown him?
I don't believe. That's the choice of faith. It believes God's plans, God's provision, God's promise.
And it rejects whatever the world has to offer. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current study, based on Hebrews chapter 11, is titled The Power of Faith. Now friend, if you'd like to take your study of the book of Hebrews and all of God's word even deeper, consider picking up a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. With this single resource filled with thousands of footnotes written by John, you will dig into scripture like never before. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, contact us today.
Our number here, 855grace and our website, gty.org. With about 25,000 study notes by John and more than 100 charts, maps, and timelines, the MacArthur Study Bible is an all-in-one spiritual library, excellent for new and long-time believers alike, and is available in several languages, English of course, as well as Spanish, German, Chinese, French, Russian, and several others. Again, to order the MacArthur Study Bible, call 800-55-grace-weekdays from 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time, or you can place your order anytime at gty.org. That's our website, gty.org, and while you're there, make sure you take a look at the Grace To You blog. You'll find practical articles from John and our staff addressing issues that affect your life and your church. You can search for the series of articles titled, Keeping the Faith. It's a helpful complement to John's current radio series on the power of faith. Those blog articles are just a few of the thousands of free Bible study tools available at gty.org. Now on behalf of John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you back tomorrow as John shows you how your faith can persevere through any trial. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.
