How did Moses become such a great servant of God? It was not his great character or leadership ability but his FAITH! Let’s consider “faith.” I like the definition of faith that says, faith is visualizing what God intends to do in a given situation and acting or living in harmony with it. We see faith in a simple formula:
·
It begins with a hopeless situation.
·
In that pit we become aware of the will of
God. It is an impossible situation.
·
In that impossibility we yield ourselves to God.
·
Then we step out, acting according to God’s plan. In that sense, Faith is the substance of
things hoped for (Hb. 11:1).
How did Moses come
to have such faith? In the story there
are two things we can consider: first, his parents who set the pattern for him;
and then, the 40 years of living with failure.
Today, let’s consider his parents.
In Heb. 11:23, while
it begins “by faith Moses,” it is actually talking about the faith of his
parents. They saw that Moses, as an infant, was a special child in some
way. They believed he would be special
in Israel. I believe the key to this is
that the family of Jacob had been in captivity about 350 years when Moses was
born, and the LORD had told Abraham that his descendants would be afflicted 400
years (Gen. 15:13). For people of Israel
who trusted God, they were anticipating that the time was getting close for God’s
promised deliverance. That was God’s
will.
But at the same
time, God’s people were in a hopeless situation. There are questions as to who was Pharoah in
the time of Moses. The most popular are
Rameses II (1250 BC, see Hollywood’s great movies, “The Exodus” and so forth)
or I would say the more likely, Amenhotep II around 1425 BC. Both of these were great builders. In other words, they fit the situation the
Bible describes: Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them
with their burdens. And they build for
Pharah supply cities, Pithom and Raamses (Ex. 1:11). In addition, because the number of Jacob’s
descendants continued to multiply during the affliction, Pharaoh had decreed
that any sons born to the Israelites should be drowned (1:22).
To Amram and
Jochebed, from the line of Levi, were born two sons, Moses and Aaron (Ex. 6:20). One of them, Moses, the younger, they
believed to be a child that God would use.
Yet, the law was, he was to be killed.
So, they trusted God. They put
him in the water, in a basket, and waited to see what God would do. This was not a “leap in the dark.” It was a very “believing” thing to do. Proof that they were expecting God to do
something was seen in that they put their daughter, Miriam, nearby to keep
watch, to know what would be done to him (2:4). What she saw was “unbelievable,” unless you have
put your faith in God!
This is the advantage of believing
parents. As Paul put it, Amram and
Jochebed “sanctified” Moses (and Aaron and Miriam; 1 Cor. 7:14) by their faith.
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