Today we will conclude our study of Moses as he is presented as a man of faith in Hebrews 11. We are picking up at vv. 27 and 28 today.
27 By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. 28 By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.
Both of these verses remind us that Moses’ choices, at least in these cases, was driven by faith. Here the author explains that Moses’ another forty-year separation from Egypt in the land of Midian. Here again the author references the second half of his description of faith in verse 1: “Now faith is . . . the conviction of things not seen”— visual certitude.
Moses’ choice to side with the Israelites is explained for us in Exodus 2:11-15a:
11 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. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.
While it may seem that Moses left Egypt because Pharoah “sought to kill Moses” (Exod. 2:15), our text in Hebrews 11 said that he was “not being afraid of the anger of the king,” in other words, that was not the cause of his departure. The cause is that “he endured as seeing him who is invisible.”
Philip Edgecombe Hughes remarks, “… it was not personal fear of Pharaoh but the awareness of his destiny as the deliverer of the covenant people that caused him to take flight. Had he remained [in Egypt], at that juncture, this destiny would have been thwarted, humanly speaking, by his execution; and so, impelled by faith in the divine purpose for his life, Moses took refuge in Midian” (A Commentary …, p. 499. Cf. Dods, 4:361).
By the way, some believe that verse 27 is not referring to Moses’ first departure from Egypt, but the departure of the Exodus. If so, Moses’ boldness and courage was very pronounced in that case.
A. W. Pink observes, “Faith and fear are opposites, and yet, strange to say, they are often found dwelling within the same breast; but where one is dominant the other is dormant” (Exposition of Hebrews [Ephesians Four Group, CD, p. 804). Moses probably had some butterflies in his stomach as he prepared to go before Pharaoh. Martin Luther fought off anxiety at the Diet of Worms as he appealed to Scripture and said, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.” Faith in God enabled these men to obey Him and overcome any fear.
Whether or not it was the first departure or the second, the key to Moses’ response is that he “endured.” “By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured – he persevered – as seeing Him who is unseen.” In other words, it wasn’t basically fear that caused Moses to leave Egypt, it was “endurance.” Endurance?
In what? Endurance implies a chosen path of difficulty that you are tempted to forsake but you hang in there and “endure.” What is the writer referring to when he says in verse 27 that Moses “left Egypt . . . for he endured . . .”? What path had Moses chosen that required endurance to stay on and even led him out of Egypt for 40 years before he came back to rescue his people?
The writer expresses the dangerous, painful path Moses had chosen in two ways: First (in verse 25) it is the choosing of ill-treatment with the people of God over the passing pleasures of sin. Second (in verse 26) it is the choosing of reproach for Christ (the Messiah) over the treasures of Egypt. Now don’t miss this! The choice was made before the threat of Pharaoh. The bridges had already been burned between Moses and Egypt. It had happened in his heart. Not yet geographically, but spiritually and morally he was gone already. Do you see that? (https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/liberated-for-love-by-looking-to-the-reward)
Faith is a hunger for God that triumphs over our hunger for the pleasures of this world. And so faith unleashes radically God-centered, risk-taking, people-loving behavior.
The source of Moses’ courageous endurance was the fact that he was able to see “him who was invisible.” The paradoxical phrase “seeing him who is invisible” does not mean he saw God with the naked eye. Faith’s eye saw what the physical eye is incapable of seeing. But there did also come a time when God was so pleased with Moses’ spiritual vision that he graced him with physical vision of a part of God’s glory (cf. Exodus 33:18–23) and spoke to him face-to-face (cf. Exodus 33:9–11; Numbers 12:7, 8).
Kent Hughes argues that this is not extraordinary, but should be the normal experience of every believer. Elisha’s prayer is just as relevant today for the church as it was when he prayed it over his anxious servant: “Then Elisha prayed and said, ‘O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.’ So the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17).
David speaks of beholding God’s beauty in the temple (Psalm 27:4) and had beheld God’s “power and glory” in the sanctuary (Psalm 63:2). But what David saw and what we see is not visible with the naked eye, but rather with the eyes of our heart.
There are verses which say we cannot see God (1 Timothy 6:15-17, 1 Timothy 1:17; 1 John 4:12; Exodus 33:20; Deuteronomy 4:12), but other verses which say that we can, such as “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). We cannot see God physically, but we cannot even see God spiritually without divine intervention. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
This is what kept Moses from fearing the wrath of Pharoah, because he could see that God was with him. Like David in Psalm 23:4, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” When we know that God is with us and for us, we can have peace in the midst of the most difficult, even terrifying, circumstances.
William Lane points out that Moses’ “seeing” of God was not a one time event, but a constant, habitual practice: “The emphasis … falls not on endurance but on continually seeing, as it were, the unseen God … The reference is not to the awesome event at the burning bush … as if to say that Moses saw one who is invisible, but to a fixed habit of spiritual perception. … From the pastoral perspective of the writer, the firmly entrenched habit of Moses in keeping God continually in view establishes a standard for imitation by the community in its experience of fear and governmental oppression” (Hebrews 9—13, p. 376).
“Looking to the reward” in verse 26 corresponds to “seeing him who is unseen” in verse 27. He had, by faith, burned the bridges in his mind (by “the assurance of things hoped for”), and then, by faith, he burned them in his flight (by “the conviction of things unseen”).
Now remember, Moses left Egypt after having protected a fellow Israelite from an Egyptian taskmaster. I can imagine that in some sense he envisioned himself as a liberator, which God would eventually confirm. But this is not the time, and possibly not the way in which God wanted Moses to liberate Israel.
Maybe this let the air out of his balloon and he sulked a bit upon leaving Egypt. He may have thought of himself as a failure. If he had the gift of foresight, he could have realized that this was merely a speed bump in God’s plan for him, that there was more preparation to do on Mose’s character before God would use him mightily.
Doesn’t that seem to be the way when God wants to use a man mightily? Joseph, Moses, David, Paul all spent years waiting for God to promote them to their divinely appointed task. God uses everything we go through to teach us and equip us. Every humbling and exhausting experience either prepares us for the next humbling and exhausting experience or prepares us for a mountaintop experience where we appreciate God’s sovereignty in a whole new way.
The last of the ten plagues that secured Israel’s exodus from Egypt was the destruction of all the male firstborn of both man and beast (cf. Exodus 12:12). But God provided a way of escape for his people. God told them through Moses to slaughter a lamb, take some hyssop and dip it in the lamb’s blood, and daub the blood on the top and sides of the doorways of their homes. Homes so anointed would be under God’s protection, and the destroyer would not be permitted to enter (cf. Exodus 12:21–23). Thus, our text reads, “By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them” (11:28).
Moses had just endured the wrath of Pharoah by faith, now by faith he must lead the nation in escaping the wrath of God.
The point is that Moses and Israel so believed God that they obeyed God to the letter. As Raymond Brown notes:
The instructions were strange, the demands costly (a lamb without blemish) and the ritual unprecedented, but they did precisely as they were told. In simple faith they kept the Passover. They relied on the God who had spoken to them through his servant: “Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did” (Exodus 12:1–3, 28).
Obedience is an act of faith. Abel obeyed, Abraham obeyed, each of these men and women obeyed God because they trusted Him and His Word.
But what is even more remarkable is that the phrase “by faith he kept the Passover” actually means that he instituted the Passover (perfect tense). Moses actually instituted the Passover “as a statute forever” to be done year after year (Exodus 12:14)—which means that Moses never doubted in the least that the people would be delivered from Egypt! He had nothing to go on but God’s word, but he believed it implicitly. Moses’ strong faith liberated Israel!
Moses told Israel…
21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23 For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.'” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. 28 Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.
Israel did not celebrate Passover every year, but Moses instituted it in faith that God would not only deliver their lives on that night, but also bring the nation out of enslavement to Egypt. Notice the emphasis in Exodus 12:28, “then the people of Israel went and did so; as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.” They obeyed God by faith, believing that they would be delivered from the destroying angel if they obeyed.
Those who did not believe, and therefore did not obey by applying the blood of the sacrificed lamb around the doorpost, would be destroyed. They did not trust in the blood of the sacrificed lamb. We read about that in Exodus 12:29-30, “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.”
Of course, this should remind us how important it is that we trust in the blood of the Lamb that was slain in our behalf on the cross. The New Testament is clear that Christ is our Passover Lamb who was slain (1 Cor. 5:7). John the Baptist proclaimed to his disciples, upon seeing Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Peter tells us “And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:17-21) Only a Lamb without sin is able to take away our sin.
R. C. Sproul notes:
[Jesus] made satisfaction for our debt, our enmity with God, and our guilt. He satisfied the ransom demand for our release from captivity to sin. However, there is another significant word that is often used in descriptions of the atonement: substitution. When we look at the biblical depiction of sin as a crime, we see that Jesus acts as the Substitute, taking our place at the bar of God’s justice. For this reason, we sometimes speak of Jesus’ work on the cross as the substitutionary atonement of Christ, which means that when He offered an atonement, it was not to satisfy God’s justice for His own sins, but for the sins of others. He stepped into the role of the Substitute, representing His people. He didn’t lay down His life for Himself; He laid it down for His sheep. He is our ultimate Substitute.
The idea of being the Substitute in offering an atonement to satisfy the demands of God’s law for others was something Christ understood as His mission from the moment He entered this world and took upon Himself a human nature. He came from heaven as the gift of the Father for the express purpose of working out redemption as our Substitute, doing for us what we could not possibly do for ourselves. (https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/jesus-our-substitute)
I want to close this lesson with a story about Adoniram Judson the very first American Protestant missionary to renounce and walk away from his life in America . . . he would give away everything to spend his life in the land of Burma, just north of Thailand. Before he embarked on his journey, he had fallen in love with wealthy young lady who also loved Christ, as did her parents. So he wrote a letter to her father, and this is what he said…
“I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure for a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influences of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left his heavenly home, and died for her and for you – for the sake of perishing immortal souls – for the sake of heaven and the glory of God. Can you consent to all this, in the [promise of] meeting your daughter in the world of glory with a crown of righteousness, brightened by the acclamations of heathen now saved, through her means, who will there be praising her Savior? / Jesse Clement, The Life of Rev. Adoniram Judson (Reprints from the collection of the University of Michigan Library), p. 25.
That is the kind of faith that Moses expressed, and we can too!
Grace Still Amazes 