Faith & The Example of Moses and Israel

Hebrews 11 | Vintage Faith | 11:23-30 | Pastor Duane Smets

This is an exegetical sermon of Hebrews 11:23-30. It covers the story of Moses, his life as a the first leader of God’s chosen people, who lead by faith in the God who was already “vintage” in the days of the ancient Egypt. Special attention is given to Jesus in that Jesus was the true king that Moses served, feared, and followed.  This sermon was originally preached on November 6th, 2011 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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The Resolved Church

November 6th, 2011

Faith & The Example of Moses and Israel

Pastor Duane Smets  |  Hebrews 11:23-30

I. Allegiance to the True King (v23,27)

II. Treasuring God and His People (v24-26)

III. Confidence in He Who Delivers (v28-30)

Introduction

Good morning. Today in Hebrews 11 we come upon Moses and the people of Israel, which basically looks at the time frame the whole book of Exodus covers.  Moses ties with Abraham in the whole book Hebrews as being mentioned more than any other person than Jesus and he also ties with Abraham here in chapter 11 in getting six verses that look at his example of faith.

If you were a Jew living in the first century, who a majority of the people who were first reading this book, Hebrews…Moses was a big deal.  He was considered by most as the greatest person of all Jewish history.  Nobody ranked higher.  Jewish culture was formed around the law and Moses was the one through whom God gave the law.  Moses is a big deal.

He sort of like George Washington is to the United States…the dude who really put the country on the map, it’s first president.  In Hebrews 11 the story has been progressing as God has revealed himself to various individuals and with Moses it finally reaches a whole group of people, Israel.  There’s creation, then the first sons of Adam and Eve, then Noah, then the promise of a family nation to Abraham, who has just one kid, but the promise gets passed down through Isaac, then Jacob and then Joseph.  As the promise is being passed on, the family is getting bigger and bigger.

In Hebrews 11, the previous three stories of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph all end in there death but when we come to Moses, the story begins with his birth and the birth of “the people” as we’ll see.  With Moses it’s the first time there is now “a people” and as a group they exercise faith.  So today we are looking at “Faith & The Example of Moses and Israel” in verses 23-30.  There are five “by faith” statements in these seven verses and six different scenes or stories that go with them.  Yet thematically there are really three main issues here, so we’ll work through the faith statements and the stories today by looking at: “Allegiance to the True King”, “Treasuring God and His People” and “Confidence in He Who Delivers.”

We’ll see as with all the other characters who get highlighted in this chapter, that their stories are not so much about them and their examples but the God they believed in.  So first, let’s go ahead and read the text and pray over it together.  We’re in Hebrews 11:23-30 (read text and pray).

I. Allegiance to the True King (v23,27)

Okay, so mainly what we have the writer of Hebrews doing here, is what he has been doing all chapter long and that is, he assumes we know the stories he references and what he is doing is adding theological content and interpretation onto what happened with these ancient figures of faith.  So here with Moses, he begins at his birth.

What happens according to Exodus 12 is about four hundred years go by from the time when Joseph (who we studied last time) is ruling the land of Egypt.  And after four hundred years, several new Egyptian kings come and go and any kind of preferential treatment toward Joseph’s family, the Jews, gets lost.  In fact what happens during this time is God fulfills his ancient promise to Abraham to make a great and numerous nation out of his family.  All the women are popping out babies like mad.  Super fertile.

A new Egyptian king comes along and he sees how the Jews are getting so numerous he worries that they will outnumber the Egyptians and overtake them.  So he does two things.  One he makes the Jews slaves and two, he made a law that any male Jewish baby that gets born is to be put to death.

Then Moses is born, a male Jewish baby.  The text says he was beautiful.  I’ve never seen an ugly baby, but okay.  Like any good parents they don’t want their child to die, so the hide him for three months and then come up with a plan.  They make a baby basket that can float in the water and they send him on down the river so that he ends up down near where the Pharaoh king’s daughter is bathing in the river and when she sees this little baby she does what all women do around little babies and she starts talking baby talk and picks him up and wants to take him home.

And she does, so Moses grows up in the house of the king like one of his own sons instructed in wisdom and trained for leadership and battle.  Historians say this was likely during the height of Egypt’s power and wealth.  Moses literally becomes an adopted in Egyptian prince.  It’s like winning the lottery.  He’s in!

Now, pause for a second and insert Hebrews theological interpretation.  Verse 23, says Moses life is marked by faith from his birth and it cites his parents hiding him and preserving his life as a sign of that.  Then Hebrews here says something else really interesting about it, almost odd.  What’s it say at the end of verse 23? That they were “not afraid of the king’s edict.”  Wait.  Isn’t that why they hide him, because they’re afraid of the king’s edict that all Jewish baby boys must be killed?

So what’s going on here?  Acts 7, is actually helpful here and will be super helpful later on today too.  In Acts 7, Stephen, one of the apostles who helped start the church, he gives a sermon before he is stoned to death becoming the first Christian martyr.  In his sermon he talks about Moses and he says Moses, when he was born was “beautiful in God’s sight (Acts 7:20).”

Now I could be wrong, but I think Hebrews may assume we understand when it says the parents saw he was “beautiful” that it means beautiful in God’s sight and not just that he was a cute little baby.  You gotta remember, Moses was huge, almost like comic book hero status if you were a Jew in the first century.  There were all kinds of legends about him, one even says that when he came out of the womb a brilliant heavenly light filled the room.

Okay.  So I don’t really think that happened and I don’t really think the parents could tell Moses was going to be this great figure one day when they saw him as a little baby.  I think very simply they recognized little babies are a beautiful gift from God.  Like Psalm 127:3 says, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.”

So when Hebrews 11:23 says they hid him because they saw the child was beautiful and were not afraid of the king I think what it’s pointing out is they worshipped and served and trusted a higher king.  A king who’s edict “to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” was more important.  Moses parents had an allegiance to the true king, the Lord God Almighty.  They feared God the king more than they feared the Egyptian Pharaoh king.

Then there this.  Fast forward a bit.  Moses grows up in the Pharaoh king’s house and one day he sees two dudes fighting, an Egyptian guy and a Jewish guy and he steps in and kills the Egyptian.  We’ll come back to this story and why he did it in our next point, but for now let’s skip down to verse 27 and look at what it says he did after this happened.

Verse 27 says, “By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king.”  Funny.  Again we’ve got a situation where it looks like on the outset that’s the very reason he flees, he just killed a guy, he committed a racially charged murder against his own adopted race.  Common sense would say, he’s afraid of the king’s justice and judgment against him for killing an Egyptian.  This is the very thing the Pharaoh was worried about, Jews rising up and overpowering the Egyptians.

But instead of being afraid of the Pharaoh king, who does the text says he was concerned about?  “Him who is invisible.”  Who do you think that is?  I’ll give you a hint.  It’s God.  Listen to 1 Timothy 1:17 “King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.”

So rather than being afraid of the Pharaoh, Moses, like his parents, feared a greater king, the invisible, immortal King of the ages, the Lord God almighty.  Yes, for sure Pharaoh is livid with him, Exodus 2 says he sought to kill him.  And Acts 7 tells us that his Jewish brothers and sister are angry with him to.  He’s surrounded on all sides, but what he is most concerned about is God, what God thinks.

Now I don’t know here what necessarily is being said here when Hebrews 11:27 says “he endured as seeing” God.  Does that mean he had a vision or something and in it God called him to flee Egypt and he was just being obedient?  Does that mean he knew God would deliver the people but just realized it wasn’t God’s time yet so he endured, not giving up but planned on fighting another day?  Does that mean he felt guilty and knew he had sinned against God by committing murder but he saw God and God let him off the hook so he could endure or continue?

I don’t really now which of these it is and maybe it’s none of them.  And to be honest there isn’t enough here in the text to tell us.  But here is what it does give us.  Any time in Scripture when you see a word or a phrase repeated, especially in close proximity to each other, like only a few verses between them…that’s a huge sign that that word or phrase is really important.  It’s like the text is shouting, hey pay attention to this point, it’s really important.  And here what we have is twice, within five verses, this repeated line about not being afraid of the Pharaoh king.  And each time in contrast the focus and the reason for not fearing him is seeing God or the blessing and promise of God fulfilled.

Remember Hebrews 11:1 at the beginning of the chapter says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  I think what we’re supposed to get from each of these cases is faith in God is meant to birth a higher allegiance in us than to any other king, boss, person or possession.  We’re not meant to fear anything or anyone but God alone!  It’s as Ecclesiastes 12:13 states, here is the end of all matters…”fear God.”  Fear God alone.  Set your sights on him.

And there is a ton of ways we could go with this in terms of application from putting false hope in political rulers of our land, to trusting the will and plan of God for our lives, to obeying God and his word rather than doing our own thing and living by our own rules or the world’s rules, to being literally afraid of God and his just judgment for our sin…there’s a bunch of things we could talk about when it comes to having an allegiance to God,  the true king.

But to make it really personal and attempt to really bring the point of the text and this story home maybe the best way is to ask ourselves where does our allegiance really lie?  Really.  When it comes down to it, is God our King?  Do you really live under his rule and reign?  What about when other voices and situations arise and are seemingly put in conflict with God and his standards or expectations, who wins?  Is what is beautiful to God beautiful to you or are you operating according to a different standard in the things you value and the things you don’t?

Do you fear God?  Does he run and rule your life or do you?  Is he your King?  Does he hold your allegiance?

The heart of this point is recognizing God is king and the question of our hearts today is, is he our king?  This point comes at things from the top down, from God to us.  Our next point comes at things from the bottom up, from us to God by getting into the inner workings and motivations of our hearts.  So let’s look move on to our next point, “Treasuring God and His People.”

II. Treasuring God and His People (v24-26)

In this point, we’re looking at verses 24-26 and to do so we got to go back to when Moses kills the Egyptian and talk about what brought it about.  The story in Exodus 2 almost makes it sound like it was  just in the heat of a moment something came over Moses.  I’ll just read it straight from Exodus 2:11-12 “One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.  He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”

Enter Hebrews 11:24,25,& 26 which make it sound like this wasn’t just an accident, a sort of crime of passion but was very intentional.  Verse 24 says Moses intentionally “refused” Pharaoh family.  Verse 25 says he was “choosing” his people.  And verse 26 says the reason why he did it was he “considered the reproach of Christ greater.”

Okay, so the first two seem conceivable.  I’m sure he knew who his biological family were.  But apparently he has not lived among the Jewish people his entire life and Acts 7 tells us he was forty years old at the time this happened.  I can sort of logically in my head make sense of that.  He longs to be reconciled to his true family and finally has enough of it and acts to do something nice for them and try to help them out.

But verse 26 just sounds wild.  It says that what was going through Moses head, what he was considering was “the reproach of Christ.”  How could he?  It was like a thousand years before Christ was even to come on the scene!  This just sounds crazy.

Now, on one hand what we’re seeing here is how all the New Testament writers see all of life and all of history and all of the Bible in terms of who Jesus is and what he has done.  Jesus becomes the filter or the lens through which they see and understand everything.  And we do to.

But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that.  What I mean is it’s not just like they’re taking this Old Testament story of Moses and adding to it this whole new meaning that it never originally meant or could’ve meant to Moses or anyone else during their day.  So the question is, how did Moses consider the reproach of Christ?

Here’s how.  Again, Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 is key.  Super helpful.  Why don’t you turn there with me this time and check out verses 23-29.  Acts 7:23-29 “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.  And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?’ But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ At this retort Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.”

Verse 25 here is the key, it gives us massive insight into what was going on in Moses head and heart, “He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.”

In case you didn’t know, the word “Christ” is not a last name.  My last name is Smets, Duane Smets.  Jesus last name is not Christ.  Christ is a title, like pastor is a title.  The title Christ means “messiah” or “anointed one.”  It’s was an expression used to identify a savior or a deliverer and it gets attached to Jesus name as a title, Jesus the Christ.  So when we say Jesus Christ it’s really a confession that Jesus is in fact the messiah.

Now what we learn from Acts 7 is that Moses realized the people needed a Christ.  They needed a messiah, a deliverer.  And he actually tries to be that man.  He tries to initiate on his own accord, God’s saving plan for his people.  It’s probably the reason why God made him wait another forty years before he would go back and lead the people out of Egypt, because only God is the deliverer.  It’s always him and Moses had to learn that.  When he does return and lead the people out, it’s God who fights the Egyptians and saves them, not Moses.

Okay.  So now we’ve sort of God a fully orbed picture of what was going on in this scene, let’s talk about Hebrews 11’s commentary on it, it’s theological interpretation and application for us.  There’s three parts to it.

One, he recognizes the spiritual family of God is his true family.  God is his true father, not Pharaoh, though it’s clear he was treated well by him his entire life long.  Verse 25 says he chooses the people, the people of God over and against his own household.

Two, he recognizes that all the money, all the power, all the prestige that the house of Pharaoh gave him, could not satisfy his heart.  That last part of verse 25 is such a key line, he chose the people of God rather “than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.”

Then three, he recognizes that the treasure and reward of the promises of God through Christ were far better than the measly physical wealth and treasure of Egypt.  And he’s willing to suffer for it.  That’s what the word “reproach” means.

Let’s talk about each of these briefly, family, joy and treasure.

Family.  Pharaoh’s house had welcomed him in, physically adopted him as his son.  But Pharaoh’s family did not know God.  And thus Moses knew he needed a greater adoption.  He needed to be transferred into the family of God.  This is one of the key things we believe and proclaim as Christians, that through Christ, we get adopted into God’s family. It’s a wild thing.  I don’t know if some of you have experienced this or not…but if you’ve experienced Christian community in the way it’s meant to be lived out, then the crazy thing is, because you’re living and worshipping together as the people of God and because Jesus pours out his Spirit into the hearts of all who believe in him…sometimes you start to feel closer and more connected to your Christian family then you do your flesh and blood.  I mean I’ll tell you what.  I love my family, my mom, my dad and my sister.  But the truth is (don’t tell them) but I feel much closer to most of you then I do with them much of the time.

Why is that?  It’s because we, here, in and through this church are living and operating as the people of God together.  We share life and God’s Spirit at work among us.  It’s something you can’t get just from hanging out with your family at home during holidays or vacations.  There is something deeply uniting and satisfying about being the community of Christ together.

Moses realized he needed that, that he need to be with God’s people.  Some of you may be Christians but you have yet to really connect with God’s people.  You have yet to really enter into community and begun to live life with others in the church, relying on one another, praying for one another, sharing your heart, sin, struggles and joys with one another.

Some of you are not in community and you need to be so bad.  And I don’t even mean just attending a community group.  That’s only like one part.  It takes time, you’ve got to commit to it and then when you’re there you got to get gutsy and open up your heart and your life, you have to let people in.  If you don’t you’ll never really experience it.  God means for the church to be the place where we experience being the family of God together.

Let’s talk about joy.  This one is big.  I love the phrase here, “the fleeting pleasures of sin.”  I don’t know about you but that phrase feels pretty self-explanatory.  If you’ve lived life for any amount of time I know you’ve experienced this.

Sin always promises pleasure and satisfaction but it never follows through with what it promises!  It’s fleeting.  It provides brief moments of temporary happiness which quickly fade and leave you feeling guilty and worse off than you were before.

I’ll give you a few examples.  Alcohol.  Alcohol is good.  It’s godly.  Jesus made a bunch of it in his first miracle and drank it quite often, so much so that he was even accused of being a drunkard (Lk 7:34) though he never got drunk.  For those of you who have been drunk you know what happens.

You have a little.  It feels good.  You’re like, oh I like this.  So what do you do, you have more and a little more and a little more.  And you feel good for a little while.  But then something happens.  You start to feel sick and before you know it you’re puking your guts out in the toilet.  Fleeting pleasure of sin.

Sex.  Sex is good.  God designed and wrote a whole X-rated book about it in the Bible called Song of Songs.  Sex is pleasure-full and there’s no amount of sex and sexual activity within marriage between a man and woman that will bring guilt or shame before God.

However, sex outside of heterosexual marriage can be very enticing whether it’s in the form of pornography or the idea of being with some other woman or man other than your spouse.  It’s how affairs happen.  So you follow through with the temptation and there’s pleasure…for a moment.  But what always follows afterward is guilt, shame, ruin, strife and misery and often the destruction of relationships.  The fleeting pleasure of sin.

One more example.  Wealth.  This is the one Moses was tempted with but denied.  He could have been the next Pharaoh if he wanted to.  He had all the money and power anyone could ever dream of at his finger tips.  But he saw that it was meaningless.

This is the one that actually probably gets most all of us in this room.  I could be wrong but I think the majority of us think if we just had enough money then life would be better.  We look at the jobs or the houses or the cars or the clothes that other people have and think…man if I just had that.  But money and power are fleeting too.

Have you ever come into a chunk of money all at once?  I’ve had it happen a few times.  And you know what happens is I can’t wait to spend it and I start thinking about what I want to buy with it.  So you go ahead and make whatever purchase and guess what happens…after a few days or weeks it’s not new anymore and it doesn’t seem like that big of deal…then the thought comes later, man I wasted that money.  Fleeting pleasure in wealth or the ability to get wealth.

What we need is a better treasure.  One that doesn’t wear out.  Something that truly satisfies.

Now notice something with me for a second.  Sometimes when we hear things like don’t give into worldliness in loving the things the world loves, or don’t give into the fleeting pleasure of sin I think we start to think that pleasure in and of itself is sin.  But that’s not what the text says.  It doesn’t say don’t have joy.  It just says don’t enjoy sin.  Instead what does it offer?

It’s in verse 27, the “reward” that is found in looking to or trusting the promise of God.  A reward is a great and joyful thing.  Essentially the call here is for us to have God as our ultimate treasure and trust that he will satisfy us.  And this is what we really need.  Because we can try and fight our passions and inclinations to enjoy sinful things.  But we won’t really be that successful if we’re just trying to not feel anything pleasurable and think if we do feel happy, that’s sin.  No we need the right kind of joy, joy that’s in God.

Listen to what Thomas Chalmers says, an old Puritan from the early 1800’s.  He preached a sermon one time titled, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection” and in it he says this…”You cannot destroy love for the world merely by showing its emptiness. Even if we could do so, that would lead only to despair…it (the fleeting pleasure in sin) can be expelled only by a new love and affection—for God and from God. The love of the world and the love of the Father cannot dwell together in the same heart. But the love of the world can be driven out only by the love of the Father.”

Oh how we need to find our satisfaction in the love the Father has given unto us.  The reward, the treasure found in knowing him exceeds all.  Look I’ll be really straight with you.  Some of you have fallen in love with the world and its pleasures and you need to repent before God today.

I’m sure we’ve got sins of alcohol and drug abuse in this room.  Some of you just enjoy alcohol too much.  I’m sure we’ve sins of sexual lust and desire for money and status here in this room.  Some of you are addicted to porn.  For some of you your job is everything and your whole life revolves around it.  But the problem really isn’t our love and desire after these things…it’s our lack of love for God.  That’s the bigger problem. We don’t treasure him but instead take him for granted.  Do you get what I’m getting after?  We need a love and joy in God to crowd out enjoyment in the fleeting pleasures of sin.

I just want to let that kind of sit for a minute, uncomfortably.  Are you in love with the world and its pleasures?

We need God.  We’re sinners and we need him to save us from ourselves and the consequences of our sin.  And the good thing is, it’s the kind of God he is.  So let’s move on and talk about our gracious God who rescues his people in our last point for today, “Confidence in He Who Delivers.”

III. Confidence in He Who Delivers (v28-30)

Here in verses 28-30 we get three rapid fire events, where Moses really drops out of the picture and God himself comes to the forefront in his rescuing and rewarding.  Three events: the Passover, the Red Sea and Jericho.

First, the Passover.  Passover simply means pass-over.  When God went to war against Pharaoh and Egypt he did a bunch of miracles, each one attacking one of the supposed Egyptian gods.  His final one was a blow to the very heart of Pharaoh who considered himself divine.  Pharaoh began his oppression of the Jews by instituting a law that all male born children were to be killed.

God turns the tables and decides to send one of his angels, called “The Destroyer” here in Hebrews, to sweep through Egypt one night and kill every first born son, including those in Israel.  But anyone who put blood on their door that night would be passed over. And so it was, the Passover. An event and a night that to this day that has vividly branded into the consciences of men both that there is bloody judgment for sinners but a God who is merciful and makes a way so that his judgment might pass over all those who trust in him and his promises.

That’s what gets commended here in Hebrews.  It probably sounded like a crazy thing at the time.  Kill a lamb and sprinkle its blood on the door.  But God said it.  Moses obeyed and the firstborns were spared.

The second event here, is in verse 29 with what happens at the Red Sea.  Basically after Pharaoh’s first born son is killed he finally tells God’s people they can go.  So everybody packs up and starts leaving, traveling out of Egypt, six hundred thousand men, not counting women and children (Ex 12:37-38).  They only get about 12 miles away and come to a dead end at the Red Sea.  And just when they’re trying to figure out what they’re going to do, they hear Pharaoh’s army coming after them because he changed his mind about letting them go and now it looks like it’s going to be a bloodbath.

Instead, God parts the sea and all of Israel starts walking across it on dry land.  Pharaoh’s army tries to follow in after them, but God collapses the sea on them and they all drown.  It’s a phenomenal, riveting scene.  Hebrews looks at the story and says it was the people’s faith in God which enabled them to walk through.

I mean you got to think about his.  However God did it, one minute there’s a sea there and then there’s likely just a wall of water being held up to make a channel between to walk through.  Some have tried to say maybe the sea was low and maybe it was a strong wind that came and blew away a lot of the water so they could walk through in just two or three inches of water.  If so, it’s amazing that the whole Egyptian army was able to drown in two or three inches of water!  No matter how you look at this God had to have done some crazy miracle and to trust this invisible God who has a Destroyer and defies the laws of nature was no easy task.  But God delivers on his promise and rescues them.

The last scene here in Hebrews for today happens forty years later (Ex 16:35).  They’ve left Egypt but it’s been a long journey with all kinds of fiascos and things that have gone wrong because the people are like how we are so often…they’re two steps forward then two steps back.  The trust God and then they don’t.  They trust God and then they don’t.  After forty years of it they finally end up in the land God promised them.  They’re at its doorstep but there a city called Jericho which stands at it’s border preventing them from going in.

So God tells his people he wants them to march around the city of Jericho seven times and then he’ll give them the victory.  Again, God comes up with these crazy plans for the people to trust him about.  This time they do and after the seventh circle the wall come tumbling down and God brings them into the land he promised.

The point of each of these stories is that God always comes through on his promises.  God always does what he says he will do.  There is not a single promise God has ever made that he has broken or changed his mind about fulfilling!  Faith puts confidence in God’s word that it will surely come true.  That God will deliver.

I’ll just ask one simple question for us and then we’ll wrap up and prepare for the Lord’s Supper.  What does it look like for you to put your confidence in God and his promises?  What about believing in and following and trusting God is the hardest for you.

These stories are meant to make whatever that thing is for us seem to pale in comparison.  The people of old, the vintage people had a confident faith in the God who delivers.  And that’s what we need.  That kind of faith which says I know God will do for me what he said he would do.  May he work it in us.

Conclusion

Well, let’s conclude.  I’ll be really honest.  Sometimes all this stuff we believe just sounds crazy to me.  That there’s a God.  That the Bible is true and all this stuff really happened.  Even more than that, this belief that Jesus really lived and never sinned and rose again and that somehow me believing he died on the cross for me, makes me and God okay???  Let’s be honest.  It sounds a little crazy.

But you know…it’s just like God isn’t it.  To do something like that to make a way for us.  In the Exodus and the Passover and the Red Sea and Jericho God did some crazy, amazing stuff in order to rescue and deliver his people and likewise in the cross of Christ God has made a way so not just a few hundred thousand people who lived a long long time ago might experience the blessing and grace of God but for thousands upon thousands throughout all time.

In every part of today’s text God has been the hero.  He’s the true king, the true father, the true joy, the true treasure, the true power, the true judge, the true deliverer and the true victor.  God is the one who is true.  He is better and he can be counted on.

And when we look at it in light of who Jesus is and what he has done…Jesus just lights up the page.  Like Moses, Jesus escaped a death decree from an evil king but unlike Moses he didn’t grow up in a house of riches but in the home of a poor carpenter.

Like Moses, Jesus saw the mistreatment of God’s people but unlike Moses he didn’t kill a man to try and save them instead he allowed himself to be slain so that slavery to sin and death would be done away with once and for all.

Like Moses, Jesus forsook the the wealth and riches of a palace, but unlike Moses he didn’t leave just material wealth and power, Jesus left all his glory in heaven above to come to earth to be with and save his people, taking on a true reproach.

Like Moses, Jesus kept the Passover, but unlike Moses Jesus himself did so by being the Passover lamb himself who shed his blood so that all who put faith in him might have the destroyer of God’s justice pass over their guilty souls.

Jesus is the true and better Moses and he’s the one who leads his people on dry ground and is taking us to the city he has prepared for us in heaven and he has torn down and removed every wall and barriers so that we might enter in.

We’ve covered a ton of ground today. If you’re not yet a Christian or your new to the Bible, you just got a big intake and a sweet exposure to who our God is and what we believe.  I’m not going to take time today to walk back through all the points of the sermon and connect them to the gospel for us.

What I will say is this.  Have God as your King.  Treasure him above all things.  The truth is we haven’t and we know that but he made a way for us in Jesus so that we might be saved and delivered and you can trust that promise.  Whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved, so cast your soul upon his mercy this morning.

Earlier I addressed some pretty pointed things.  I think there some of you today who have some serious repenting to do.  You need to come clean and get right with God.  He knows it all already and he died for you anyway, so just come into his embrace and be welcome at his table.

Other of us I pray have been inspired with a view of the greatness and majesty of God our King and Savior.  He is the God who cares for his people and he cares for you.  We serve a great, great God.

When we come before the table each week to receive the bread and the wine, the elements of Jesus body and blood, we’re coming into to the table of our Father, as sons and daughters in his family.  He died for us so that we might be his, a praise to his name and there is no better place, no better treasure, no better joy than to dine with him.

So let’s respond to the good news of the gospel today.  We’re sinners and yet he loves us and died for us and welcomes us into his graces.  Come and eat and drink deeply.

Let’s pray.