Through Faith and By Faith - Hebrews 11

Looking at the achievements of faith from the perspective of persuasion and credence. Part 11 - Moses - Part 1

Author: Randy Pritts

Today's Text:

kjv@Hebrews:11:23 @ By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

"By faith Moses..." v23

There has been quite a distance of time between where we left off last at the dying instructions of Joseph and where we arrive at today. Not much activity or additional framing is recorded for us though in the Bible from God. For us it is basically a turn of the page from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Exodus chapter one. Don't let the turn of a page fool you.

From the time of Joseph to the time we are at now things have gone from very good for the tribes of Israel to very bad. The same people the Egyptians welcomed in with open arms, their king Pharaoh now has had quartered in the labor camps as slaves. Just as we have said all along God speaks, man reacts, more times than not man reacts poorly.

It is not as if for all this time God has been silent. No, God has been blessing his people just as promised, with vast numbers, with wealth and riches and much authority. It is God's blessing upon HIS people to this great extent we should say that is placing HIS people in such great danger. HE has blessed them to the point where in fact, where the Egyptian people can no longer trust them. Should another nation attack Egypt, they fear, the prosperous tribes of father Jacob would likely exit off or conspire against Egypt, else migrate in mass to the Canaan lands reportedly promised of by their Jehovah God through the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

The push back from the Pharaoh has come to a point where he has issued a decree that any male child born of a Hebrew woman must be killed. Yet for some reason there are still male Hebrew children that live, and it angers Pharaoh who sees this so. Apparently the Egyptian midwives in charge of this extermination have a soft place in their hearts for the innocent Hebrew children, at least an uncomfortably with the king's command too. They offer up some lame excuse to Pharaoh as to why this decree isn't being done.

We must consider well therefore, that the framing word of God proceeds them, and shapes them, the blessings of God make the strange nations to God respond. The king reacts, the midwives react, the guards react, the Hebrews react, the nearby Canaanites and Amorites react, the world reacts. In a sense the world is reacting still to as much as been framed to this Exodus point and Moses to this day.

Before it gets any better for the tribes of Jacob though, it is going to get a whole lot worse. As a result of the Egyptian midwives hesitancy, the new born male children now are to be dumped into the river. It is under this furtherance of this gruesome decree that we come upon the birth of one male child in particular, none other than the future great prophet Moses.

The author of Hebrews today is recalling the good report of faith in our elders at the time in that affliction when Moses was born and hidden three months by his parents, by the strength of God's framing word not being afraid of the Pharaoh's commandment. In context this author is using this good report of faith as a means of strengthening the faith of his fearful and wavering new converts. This is the first of six reports he uses based upon the much revered and familiar prophet of God Moses.

"...because they saw..." v23

This first report isn't really so much to do with the faith of Moses being a three month old infant, it has more to do with that of his parents and older sister. However, this beginning report may have had something to do later on in his faith as he became a man and renounced his adopted position in in the courts of Pharaoh. It could be said that as a result of their faith he was shaped above and beyond the upbringing of his adopted world. We focus then first on the substance of faith his parents and sister employed as that substance was the same substance that eventually shaped his substance.

It is one thing to hope in a good thing. It is a good thing to hope that that the newly born child will survive this. It is another to actually push the improvised craft made of bulrushes containing the child our into the river. Faith is the substance behind that accumulating effort.

First they hid the child and nourished him up until he was big enough to better his chances of surviving the float. Too quickly it came to a point where they could hide the baby no more. There is a sense where they didn't disobey they command of Pharaoh, they just delayed it long as they could in obedience to God and love. It is not that the male child is not going into the river, it is that he is going into the river better prepared to survive, and he is being strategically placed in an area of the river where Pharaoh's daughter is known to bath. Perhaps the daughter upon seeing the fairness of the child will have a mother's compassion heart on the child and do something of her own to save him. Yes, it's just a desperate hope, nothing more, but at the same time it is a hope that has been acted upon by equal faith in God substance.

If you could imagine first the strength of faith it required not to be afraid of the very real and present danger of the oppressive potentate's direct orders. This way of explaining the substance of true faith to your converts would be extremely useful as it covers a great deal of ground in a small package.

There are the grounds of standing firm against the further threats of oppression. The oppressor can say all that he wants to about what he's going to do and what you have to do to keep him from doing it, the fact of the matter is that all things are in God's hands. If God intends for it to happen, then God will provide a way to pull HIS faithful children safely to the other side and see them through it. If God does not intend to allow the fulfillment of these threats then there is no way that God is going to be tricked into allowing them to do it.

There are also the grounds of not knowing the means of how God will do this. Often times, at least to our finite way of thinking, the options are few to impossible. With God however, there is no option that approaches impossible, therefore there are numerous options that are present with HIM to consider. The thing to consider is not which option is possible or impossible for HIM to do, it is which of these options best suits HIS will and HIS long range purposes. There are often those mysterious sometimes desperate risk taking grounds to faith that these converts need to consider: don't give in/don't think that you will somehow know it all beforehand/don't be afraid to take risks/don't be afraid to place it all squarely into God's hands.

Now not just anyone can stake their claim on God being able to somehow do this unless they know and are aware of God's overall promise, HIS the repairing context of HIS framing word to the ages and it's course/direction. In other words, these parents are not just blindly putting the child's fate out there. They know of the promised Messiah, they know of the fig leaves being replace by the hand of God's guilt hiding skins, they know of the report of Able and Noah, they have thought it through and meditated long and hard on it. They know by Abraham and Isaac walking back down that mount that God will see to it/be providing, of Isaac's blessing to Jacob and Jacob unto his sons, and of Jacob's bones returning one day to the tombs of his fathers in Canaan. From long long ago the word of God has been doing its' framing and it has framed these parents generation into this. So it is not again just faith blindly leaping, it is hope in reverent context of all that has come before and all that is promised to proceed.

Consider also the grounds that oppression and affliction can be used by God to foster strength and growth in the body of HIS believers. Believers today dwell in this delusion of prosperity and only prosperity being used by God to further HIS restorative framing. There is also the sense that if one is true and strong in the faith then his/her prosperity will be the tangible proof of that. Modern belief rather looks down on oppression and affliction as if the believers do not believe enough or that they are doing/believing something wrong that is blocking God from prospering them individually or as a whole. There is that human tendency to view resistance/opposition/affliction as God's undesirable chastening and not HIS way and means towards spiritual strength and strong numbers. Best to get this tendency out of our heads as it puts us directly in opposition to God's long history of restorative framing.

"...a proper child..." v23

The phrase here might be our only indication as to what was in the parents mind when they set the child adrift. Proper here means to convey handsome or fair. The suggestion might be that the young babe looked different or somehow stood out enough that whoever down river came upon him might be more likely to fetch the raft in. By all means, every mother thinks of her child as a beautiful and perfectly made ray of sunshine, as well they probably should. Very few infants however look any different or any more handsome to total strangers. Moses apparently was this type of babe. Nothing that he had done. Nothing that mom and dad had done. God it was that blessed the child with these looks, and likely for this very purpose: to stand out enough to attract the eye and heart and sympathies of Pharaoh's daughter. She was not looking for a child far as we know, and she certainly wouldn't be looking for a child that was born Hebrew. Again, this is all God in HIS most mysterious doing.

Neither I nor likely you are handsome enough to pull this feat off, at least not by the gifts of physical attraction. These converts can be attractive however in their own God given ways. This is especially true when the numbers of them draw near together, they stand firm, they partake of God's grace in Christ Jesus, and like unto Jesus they consider each other and provoke one another Christian love and good works; just as the author has been strongly exhorting.

There is nothing attractive to strangers of this faith when it is fearful and timid and bitter and vacillates on core beliefs in order to appear more chameleon. There is nothing hidden that is appealing, that stands out to draw the strangers glance, tug on their occasional perhaps accidental heart and compassions. Not all that are watching upon these converts are mere strangers, many are family and or Abrahamic brethren. It might well be worth taking a chance on substance and framing context of what the Christian path hopes on, placing it all in the capable hands of our Lord and Savior and Spirit.

I have no doubt that a good many of these converts addressed here stepped into the frame of mind allowing them to do this. The fact that we have this letter in our hands centuries later to help guide us is strong evidence and a good report that enough of them succeeded (should I say allowed God to succeed through them). As they are a good report of faith to us, so might we be made a good report of faith unto our future generations.

"...and they were not afraid of the king's commandment" v23

One more thing that I would like to point out having to do with a tyrant in a position of unfettered authority like this one. For the most part unyielding proclamations and such manic extremes and unpredictability serve the tyrant well. There is a species of people who prefer being under absolute control and such displays of overwhelming power; it is a matter of political comfort to them. Can you imagine walking the river bank though, being upset by the frequent sight of Hebrew babies though strung all along? There are somethings that are done that are not even in the best interest of a powerful tyrant.

The fracture here, not surprisingly, happens within the Pharaoh's own house with his own daughter. It comes to a point where enough is enough of this heavy handedness. Because the child has a "fair" appearance unlike the scapegoat Hebrews, the Hebrew babe is taken in and adopted, schooled in the arts and treated as royalty. And because the child was nursed till weaned by his mom, the family and friends who could be trusted with the secret knew about this fracture in the royal house all this time.

God can use these situations. That is the point I would like to add to our consideration. Granted this is a world of terrible injustice. The evil ones appear to be so strong and the good so weak and helpless. Helpless that is if not for our God. David often poetically replied "let them dig their pits to catch me and fall into them...Let them be trapped by their own devices. When this happens and they do fall into them it is not by our strength they fall in, but our Savior's. No matter how impossible the possibilities look at this moment, there is no problem that cannot be made right by God.

Perhaps this is a word more people than just these converts should take to their hearts here today!

Comment Board: ByFaithAndThroughFaith11

Tags: Moses, Pharaoh, Oppression, Mystery, t[God's Provision], ,

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