Faith in the Trenches: God versus the Gods - Treasures of Faith - Week 8 Day 6

TODAY'S TREASURE

By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

Hebrews 11:28

Transcript

Faith in the Trenches: God versus the Gods

Chuck and Sharon Betters

Today’s Treasure

By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

Hebrews 11:28

Hebrews 11 commends the faith Moses demonstrated through his celebration of the Passover. We cannot truly appreciate the powerful significance of the Passover without considering, for just a moment, the mighty plagues God brought down upon the Egyptians. When Moses chose to be mistreated alongside the people of God, he was also repudiating the pantheon of Egyptian deities —a group of more than eighty false gods and goddesses that were worshiped and honored throughout that pagan nation.

At first, we might think the plagues were simply a creative way to harry Pharaoh until he finally relented and set the Israelites free. However, each plague was an intentional, specific affront to a particular Egyptian god or goddess. This was no mere battle between Pharaoh and Moses. It was a spiritual war between the One God, Yahweh, and the false gods of this world. With each new plague, God challenged and mocked the Egyptian gods, proclaiming His sovereign right to rule over all things. These battles prepared Israel to believe in His protection in the midst of the tenth and ultimate plague: the coming of the angel of death. For 430 years, the Jews had been assimilated into Egyptian culture, and now they were enslaved by Pharaoh. But in just one year, Israel’s God systematically exposed the barrenness of Egypt’s entire religious system.

Throughout the early plagues, Pharaoh hardened his heart. During the latter plagues, as Pharaoh grew ever more resolute in his defiance of Moses and his God, the Lord delivered Pharaoh over to his own evil desires. He thus prepared him and his worthless gods for the ultimate judgment: a plague of death among the firstborn of Egypt. Even as God did this, He also prepared the people of Israel for what was to become the centerpiece tradition of Old Testament faith, the Passover. During the ninth plague of darkness, God gave Moses His instructions concerning the Passover and how it was to be observed (Exodus 11:1–3; 12:1–28).

By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. (Hebrews 11:28)

On that terrible day of the last plague, tormented wails and anguished screams filled the air as Egyptian parents helplessly watched their firstborn sons die. The previous nine plagues had already convinced them that the gods of Egypt were powerless and that their priests would not be able to heal their children. Even the firstborn son of Pharaoh died. Meanwhile, the people of Israel worshiped God in awestruck fear and reverent silence as the angel of death slowly moved through the land. Forever engraved on every Israelite’s soul was the terror of that night. What was God doing? What was happening to their Egyptian masters? Why did God choose this way, this plague? Would they really be spared God’s wrath by the blood sprinkled on their doorposts?

As these people waited through that long, terrible night—listening, praying, and worshiping, they learned to trust God despite their questions and fears. The blood of the lamb had marked them as belonging to the Lord God, protecting them from His wrath and holy judgment. Just as the blood of Christ now covers the sins of God’s people, the blood on those doors forever marked out those who trusted in the one and only God.

Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, the Passover became the rite that would continually reaffirm Israel’s unique identity as God’s special people and a light to the rest of the nations on earth. God gave instructions to build temples and to keep written records to preserve and remember the significance of that one amazing night. The Passover pointed to the coming of Jesus Christ, God’s sacrificial lamb, the One who would provide full and final provision for our sins—and protect us forever from the angel of death.

God called. Moses, aware of the danger and more than a little afraid, nevertheless surrendered and obeyed. Even his wildest imagination could not have prepared him for the painful realities of the extraordinary days that lay ahead. A careful study of Moses’ friendship with God reveals a man who frequently asked God “Why?” and “How?”—a man who doubted his own abilities but who soon learned that God was more than able to meet his needs. Being God’s messenger and servant was a high-risk, lonely, humbling assignment.

Choosing to be identified not as the son of a king, Pharaoh, but as a son of the King, the Lord God of Hosts, placed Moses right in the center of the spiritual war being fought for the lives and souls of God’s chosen people. In a way we cannot fully understand or appreciate, Moses’ life of sacrifice was also actually driven by his belief in Christ, the final and great Deliverer of God’s people, the Messiah who was yet to come.

“Moses regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” Hebrews 11:26

We must not miss the significance of these words, chosen so carefully by the writer of Hebrews, regarding Moses’ willingness to serve God. Moses, like the other godly men and women of his day, as well as those before him, trusted in God and in the fulfillment of God’s promise to bless and deliver them in whatever way He chose. These people trusted in the ultimate salvation they knew God would bring them, a salvation that still lay many centuries in the future, a salvation that would not be a miraculous act so much as a miraculous Person: God’s own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, Moses could obey God “for the sake of Christ” long centuries before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, trusting God for a faraway future he couldn’t see. God promised Moses, as He promises us, “I will help you. Do you trust Me?” When we answer yes, we too are trusting Him for help we cannot see and perhaps can’t even imagine. Isn’t this the very essence of “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”? Moses was asked to obey God for the present and to trust Him for the future, a scary future at that, a future yet unseen. It is the same question God is asking us today, indeed this very moment. How shall we answer Him?

PRAYER

Father, thank You for the comfort and assurance of Your promises fulfilled and recorded for us in Scripture. We pray Your grace would abound when the future seems uncertain to us. Help us to rest confidently in You. Amen.

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Adapted from Treasures of Faith by Chuck and Sharon Betters with permission from P&R Publishing

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