After forty years as part of Egypt's royal family, Moses suddenly found himself in the lonely position of tending sheep in the hot desert. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah shares how the experience led Moses to spend more quality time with God. from his series Profiling the Greatest Pillars of the Faith. Here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message, Moses, the persuasion of faith.
Anybody who has ever studied the life of Moses is intrigued by the many experiences he had. It seems like every time we turn around, something unique was happening to Moses, and God was using Moses in a unique way. From his birth all the way through to the Exodus of the children of Israel, God had his hand on this man's life, and there were reasons for it. He was a man of faith, and we're going to learn more about that today as we once again cast our eyes on the scripture of Hebrews 11. And the study is called Ordinary People, Extraordinary Faith.
Once again, these materials that we have been sharing with you are available from Turning Point at davidjeremiah.org. When you go to that website, you will be able to order. The CD package and the study guide that goes with it, the printed study guide. It will give you all the notes and outlines of the things we've been talking about over these last days in the month of November. And then please remember, we're only going to have a few more days to tell you about our special resource, which I find myself to be very excited about.
It's a little book called Where to Go in the Bible. It's 89 topics selected to help you find the answers to your questions, not in the words of men, but in the scriptures themselves, printed out on the page where the question is asked. Please get your copy of this. You can do that by sending a gift of any size to Turning Point. When you send your gift, please say, send me the book that you're offering this month, or send me where to go in the Bible, and we'll send this book to you right away.
It will help you, and I'm sure you'll use it, and you'll find it a blessing to your own life and ultimately to the lives of people that you know and interact with. Here is part two of Moses: the persuasion of faith. The heart of a mother and father must be the heart of faith. Moses' parents had to believe that God was at work in all of this. And we, in our day, like Jacobed and Amrin, have to do our very best, and then we have to trust God, don't we?
I mean, that's one of the frustrations of being a parent if you don't know it. Maybe you've forgotten it. But I want to tell you something. You can only do so much as a parent, and then you have to say, Lord, I've given everything I have to this, and now you have to take this child. And you have to take him where you want him to go.
Whether it's at 8 or 9 or 18 or 19, where we turn our children loose, we say we've done the best we can. We have to go out and meet the real world now. Thank God when they do well, and we pray very diligently for them as we go through the process. Acts 7.21 says, But when he was set out, Pharaoh's daughter took him away. and brought him up as her own son.
The only way Moses could survive the Holocaust of the children of his day was for his parents to give him over to the daughter of Pharaoh. And she took him and she raised Moses. apart from his natural family. The Bible says that his parents allowed this to happen. What was the key to it?
By faith. Whoa.
Now that puts faith down where the rubber meets the road, doesn't it? That puts faith down where, I mean, you say, I don't know if I could do that, Pastor.
Well, they couldn't do it either except by faith.
So that was the courage of Moses' parents. Notice the course of Moses' preparation. When Moses left home, he went with Pharaoh's daughter and he went into the whole palace regime of Egypt. Acts chapter 7 and verse 22 says, And Moses was learned in the world. In all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in words and in deeds.
And I've written down in my notes. Moses went to Egypt and three things happened to him. First of all, he became a student. The Bible says he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptian. He took courses in Egyptian history, Egyptian philosophy, and Egyptian practice.
He became a learned Egyptian. He was a student. Secondly, He was a statesman. The Bible says that Moses became mighty in words. He was able to state his own case.
He was able to make a case for himself. He was endowed with unique oratorical powers. And thirdly, He was a soldier. The Bible says he was mighty in deeds. And if you read the secular history of that time, tradition records the great victories for the Egyptian armies that were gained under Moses' leadership.
During his tenure in Egypt, Moses would have been learned in military training and discipline and patience and quick decision-making, and he would have met many classmates from many countries and no doubt traveled to many different parts of the world. What was God up to in all of this? God sent him to the enemy so that he could get trained to do what God was going to put him in task to do. And by faith his parents gave him up, and by faith he went to Egypt. And notice Not only the courage of his parents and the course of his preparation, but notice the conviction of his heart.
Hebrews 11, 24 and 26 says this. By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he looked. for a reward.
Now watch what happened here. I doubt if any of us can imagine the impact of a decision like the one Moses made. He was surrounded with the luxury of Egypt, which at that time was one of the greatest nations to arise and full of everything you could ever possibly want to enjoy. In spite of all the opportunity that lay before Moses in Egypt as an adopted son of the king, he deliberately refused to be regarded as the son of Pharaoh. He based his refusal on an estimate of the comparative value of the glory of Egypt and the position of God's people.
This moment in Moses' life has been called the psychology of a great refusal. He looked at Israel and he saw poverty. But there are four verbs in Hebrews 11 that tell us how he made the decision. I want you to underline these verbs in your Bibles. First of all, verse 24: refusing.
Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He had learned his courage from his parents, and it was a great lesson that they had passed on to him. He said, I could, but I will not. It's possible for me to do it, but I'm not going to do it. And he refused.
The first verb is the word refusing. But then in verse 25, he went from refusing to choosing. Moses chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. To all the outward appearances, he made a mistake. I mean, if you looked at it from our perspective, you say, Moses, what are you doing?
I mean, you're passing up an opportunity to go to the very top of this incredibly wealthy nation. It was truly one of the great no's of history. I mean, with combined insight and courage, he chooses and he casts in his lot with the people of God, even though it meant the endurance of affliction. Surely he had to have been tempted by the pleasures of sin. But he deliberately sided with God's people.
The pleasures of sin are only for a season, but the people of God have eternal pleasures. Psalm 16:11 says, You will show me the path of life. In your presence is the fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
So he began by refusing. He continued by choosing, and he went on by esteeming. Notice verse 11:26. Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. This word esteeming means accounting.
In the language of the Old Testament, it means balancing this against that. It means taking the pros and the cons of a situation and measuring them one against the other. It's a calm, deliberate choice that is made. Moses got alone someplace in a room with God, and he laid down on one side of the sheet of paper all the advantages of becoming an Egyptian ruler and all the advantages of identifying with the people of God, and he chose God. It wasn't a moment of some kind of psychological thing.
It was a careful, conscious decision on the part of Moses. That's what this means. In other words, he sat down one day and he looked at everything that Egypt had to offer him. Then he looked at everything that God and God's people had to offer him. And though he over on the scale seemed to be tipping in favor of Egypt from the outward perspective.
Moses knew in his heart that he was going to make the right choice if he chose for eternity and not for the temporal things of this world. And he esteemed it and he accounted it and he calculated it out and he put it down in a sheet of paper and he drew a line down the middle and he put all the blessings of God over here and all the pleasures of Egypt over here. And then that light, he made a very strong, calculating decision. He esteemed. The Bible says the reproach of Christ greater Than the riches of of the treasures of Egypt.
It says, Moses looked to the reward. There's the last verb. He refused, he chose, he esteemed, and he looked. Verse 26, Moses looked to the reward.
Someone has written that the reason many of us give up and give in to temptation is not that we want too much. but that we settle for too little. Moses wanted more than the pleasures of Egypt could give him. He wanted something that would last forever. He wanted eternal pleasures.
And this is the reason or rationale for Moses' faith. It is the reason he endured and he was faithful. Moses was filled with conviction that God was promising him greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. Hebrews 12, 2 and 3 says about our Lord. That for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame.
In many respects, that's what Moses was doing. He was looking forward. He was living forward, realizing that. He could Get the pleasures of life for a season, but they would soon be over, or he could choose the things that last for eternity. And isn't that the choice we're constantly making as God's people?
I mean, that doesn't mean that we can't have some of the blessings of this world. God provides all good things for us to enjoy, but sooner or later along the way, we have to make a choice like Moses made in more than one area of our life. And he had the faith to do it.
So that's the period of preparation. 40 years Moses is getting ready. First of all, for a short time in his parents' house, and then for the rest of the 40 years, living under Pharaoh, in Pharaoh's house. As the surrogate's son. of Pharaoh's daughter.
We come to the second period of his life. This is what we might call the period of isolation. Again, it was 40 years. And let me read to you from the book of Acts, verses 23 through 29.
Now when Moses was 40 years old, It came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed. And struck down the Egyptian, for he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand. Moses thought they're going to think, you know, God sent him here to help us, but they didn't get it. And the next day he appeared to two of them as they were fighting, and he tried to reconcile them, saying, Men, you are brethren.
Why do you do wrong one to another? But he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you did that Egyptian yesterday? At this saying, Moses fled. And he went to the wilderness and became a dweller in the land of Midian.
where he had two sons and when forty years had passed, He came back. Are you getting this? There were some things that Moses could not learn in prosperity.
Some things that he had to learn in adversity. In the backside of the desert, Moses learned his deepest lessons.
Someone has written, for 40 interminable years, Moses was forced to lead a life of obscurity in a land that he hated, performing a job that to an Egyptian was the most demeaning task on earth. But it was during this baffling time that Moses met with God. Beheld God's glory, became God's friend. Moses knew God and he loved God and he obeyed God and he talked with God and he actually caught a brief glimpse of God in the desert for 40 years. And I've just written down in my notes that as we get older, most of us realize.
that we don't learn a whole lot in the busy stuff of life. Instead, some of our greatest times of growth occur when we don't have anything we can do but listen to God.
Somebody told me one time that when you are in the hospital and you are on the bed, you don't have any choice but to look up. That's something God does to you sometimes, doesn't he? He puts you in a situation where you can only look up. Moses went from 40 years in the palace of Egypt To 40 years on the backside of the Midian desert, taking care of a bunch of filthy sheep that belonged to his father-in-law. And you can just imagine over and over again Moses saying, What am I doing here?
And you know, that happens all the time. I never had to go to the wilderness, and I'm not much into sheep, so that's not anything I've ever experienced. But I remember, and Anna will remember this. When we were in seminary, I had come out of college and I had taken a Bible major and I knew some of the Bible. And a lot of my friends came right out of Bible college and went to pastor churches.
In fact, one of my friends who did that visited our church. I haven't seen him in years. I was just so excited to see him. When he was in Bible college at Cedarville before me, a couple years before he graduated, he didn't go to seminary. He just went and started a church, and he built a huge church in Toledo, Ohio.
But God called us to seminary, and you know, I like seminary, but I was so anxious to get into the work. I wanted to be a preacher. Don and I would drive over to Fort Worth every weekend to a little church over there called the Fort Worth Bible Church. We drive over on Sunday morning early. And I'm going to tell you that I was the youth pastor, the Christian Ed Director, and the minister of music in that church.
I led the choir a long time ago. I'm not remembering that with all that fondness, but I did it. And I led the worship in the service. And we would go over there in the morning and We'd stay there in the afternoon. We would take sleeping bags and put them on the floor in the kitchen and take a little nap in the afternoon because both of us were working full-time jobs.
We were in seminary. We were doing all this work in the church, and we couldn't make it happen if we didn't get a little rest.
So we'd rest. I'd lead the choir practice at 6 o'clock at night, and then we'd have the service. And then our preacher, Dr. Madison, would preach and then we'd get in our car and we'd drive back to Dallas to our apartment and get ready for the next week. Donna was working at the Blue Cross Company.
I was going to school and working part time for the Illinois California Express. And Interestingly enough, every night on the way home, because of the timing, On one of the local radio stations, there was a program that featured a great preacher. C.M. Ward, he had this great music that would come on, and it was like an evangelistic service. And he'd get to the end of his sermon and he would give an invitation on the radio and he would say something like this.
And now as we come to the end of the service, you're gathered all across the altar from Boston, Massachusetts, all the way down to Tallahassee, Florida. And all across the nation, all across to the West. And he would describe the nation like it was his congregation, and he would bring people to the altar. And I had this incredible hunger and desire. to be doing the work of the ministry.
And the next day I would go back to class. And take courses that I know I needed to take, some of which were boring. And I'd have to go to the library and write these long papers. and all of the collateral reading. And I would think, what am I doing here?
What am I doing? I should be out serving. Look at my friends who are already out in churches, and we'd have this discussion on the way home. But I stayed. Yeah.
And I got to tell you, it's the greatest decision I ever made. because I've been fishing out of that hole for all these years I've been in the ministry. But I want to tell you something, sometimes the preparation that God is doing in your life isn't that much fun. But you know what I'm saying? Moses was on the back side of the desert.
Probably wondering, what does this have in the world to do with God's plan for my life? Why am I here? What is this all about, God? But the Bible says God was ministering to his life, and it was on the back side of the desert where he had that incredible experience, that crisis experience. at the burning bush.
The period of preparation, 40 years. The period of isolation, 40 years. And finally, the period of validation, 40 years. Once again, read with me Hebrews 11:27. By faith.
Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, But he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood. lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them. By faith they pass through the Red Sea as by dry land. whereas the Egyptians attempting to do so were drowned.
Moses' 40 years of preparation were over, and his 40 years of probation were accomplished. It was time for him to lead his people. beginning at the age of 80. Moses began his great work for God as he led the Israelites out of Egypt. and through the wilderness toward the land of Canaan.
It took only one night for God to take Israel out of Egypt, but it took 40 years for God to take Egypt out of Israel. The last 40 years of Moses' life became the time where he became the leader of the Israelites, battled with Pharaoh, led the people out into the wilderness, wandered in the wilderness, and then, after all that hard work, Moses, at the age of 120, got mad one day and did something God told him not to do, and God didn't allow him to go into the promised land, which had been his goal for his whole life. That's a reminder to all of us that you can get all the way to the end and still blow it big time if you're not careful. Moses was at the end of his life, and God wouldn't let him go into the promised land. You say that was kind of severe, wasn't it?
I mean, after all God did in Moses' life and all that Moses did for For God? But you know what I always like to think about? I like to think about the fact that he didn't get to go in there with the rest of the people. But when you come to the New Testament, And the Mount of Transfiguration, you see Moses right alongside Jesus in the Promised Land.
So God just put him on the shelf for a few years and let him see it later. But he punished him because of his unbelief.
So, Moses' 40 years of preparation are over, his 40 years of probation are completed, and at the age of 80, he began the ministry of leading his people through the wilderness, and his work for God was chronicled in just a few references to the Passover. And for all those years, Moses was the great leader. the greatest legislator who ever lived. What a man. He lived by faith.
And though he made a mistake at the end, I always think about this passage in the Old Testament that says. about David. That in all of the things about David God blessed him and honored him, except in the matter of Bathsheba. Isn't that interesting? With the exception of the matter of Bathsheba, God honored David.
What I thought about was this: that God doesn't see us based on the exceptions in our life. He sees us on the totality of our life. He doesn't say, okay, you made a serious mistake. That's who you are. That's the way life is for you.
No, no, no. God isn't like that. Not even for the man David who did a horrible thing, compounded by other horrible things. God said. In all of his life, David honored me, and David loved me, and David served me, with the exception.
And I think God said the same thing about Moses. Through all of his life, Moses honored the Lord and followed the Lord's direction. with the exception of his temper tantrum at the end of his life. That made his entrance into the Promised Land delayed for a long time. and he didn't get to enjoy it with the people that he had led.
In this brief record of Moses' life, we can observe three things. First of all, the vision of faith. Moses was able to see beyond the temporal and penetrate into the eternal because he saw God. Moses was connected with God, so he saw beyond all the stuff that we see with our eyes. He saw what God was up to.
And then I think about the value of his faith. Moses' decision was made on the basis of the value of faith. Remember what we said? He reckoned, he chose, he esteemed, he determined because he saw the ledger and it was clearly in God's favor, and so he made the right decision. And then we see the victory of faith.
Moses overcame the world. He overcame Pharaoh. He overcame his own flesh as the temptations of Egypt were very strong. And I've written this down. I don't know where I heard this or where I read it, but I think it speaks marvelous truth about Moses.
Moses spent his first 40 years learning to be somebody. And then he spent his next 40 years learning that he was nobody. And then he spent the last 40 years learning that God can take a nobody and make him into a somebody. Isn't that the way God worked in his life? And that's the way he works in our lives, not in 40-year segments, because none of us here live to be 120.
But I think one of the things I've learned about this is that we should never despise the times of training and the quiet times. Maybe you're going through a time right now where you've been set aside for a reason. I can think of many reasons why that would be true. And maybe you think God has forgotten me, God's put me on the shelf, God's not using me anymore, but God may be just giving you a little taste of Midian. He may be just letting you learn a little bit in the quiet side.
Sometimes we get running so fast we can't hear what God is saying. And maybe God's allowing you in this period of time as you're hearing His voice maybe a little clearer now that things have gotten uncomplicated. And the only reason he's doing that is because he's got some great work for you to do. and he has his own way of preparing us. He does it in all of our lives, just as he did in the life of Moses.
You know, I feel so blessed to have been. Once again, exposed to these great men of the Bible from the Old Testament. Each of them has their own lesson to teach us, and each of us who study together from these lives can apply the truth to our lives, to our hearts. How do we stand up under the pressures of life?
Well, God shows us in personal ways by giving us the history of men and women who did exactly that. We are so blessed to have the scriptures. What a Great blessing it is to have in our hands these wonderful truths that have been preserved for us for so many years, right from the heart of God. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about Jericho. We're going to talk about Joshua.
We're going to talk about the courage of faith. I hope you'll join us then. In the meantime, don't forget to order your copy of Where to Go in the Bible, which is our resource for the month. A wonderful little guide to the scriptures that answer your questions. Yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size.
Simply say, send me the book for this month, and we'll do it. The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. If you're growing because of this ministry, we'd love to hear from you at Turning Point PO Box 3838 San Diego, California 92163 by visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or calling 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's newly updated scripture reference guide, Where to Go in the Bible When.
It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also view over 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's sermons on any screen, anytime you like, on our Turning Point Plus streaming service for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit TurningPointPlus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Ordinary People: Extraordinary Faith on Turning Point.
