Keystone PC
Sunday, October 11
- Bible TriviaLoading...
- Preach the regular text aloud. Gray italic brackets are delivery cues. // = pause. /// = long pause.[Look up. Begin warmly]IntroductionWe love a story where faith gets rewarded immediately. Pray, and the door opens. Obey, and the blessing shows up by Friday. But that's not the story Hebrews 11 has been telling us. //Over the last few weeks we've been walking through this chapter — the "hall of faith" — and we keep finding the same strange pattern. These are people who pleased God. And many of them died without seeing the promise fulfilled.Faith, we've been learning, lives in the gap between what God has promised and what we can currently see. //Today we come to Moses. Before we consider the choices faith makes, hear God’s Word from Hebrews 11:23–29.[Read the Scripture slowly]Hebrews 11:23–29The Word of God[Settle. Breathe. Pray]Prayer for IlluminationLet us pray. Gracious God, by Your Holy Spirit, open our minds to understand Your Word and our hearts to receive it. Fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, strengthen our trust in Your promises, and give us courage to obey You even when the road is hard. As we hear Your Word, help us to rest in the grace of our Savior and take the next clear step of faith. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. //Five times in these seven verses we hear the words “by faith.” His parents hid him. Moses refused the identity Egypt offered him. He left Egypt. He kept the Passover. And the people crossed the sea.Trust in God took shape in costly choices. Faith expresses itself in choices. Today we will consider those choices—and what trusting God asks of us. //[Change slide][Look up. Teaching tone]1. Faith Sees What Others Miss (vv. 23-24)"By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden by his parents for three months, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they didn't fear the king's edict." //Start with the parents. Amram and Jochebed—we know their names from Exodus 6—looked at their newborn son under a death sentence and decided the king’s edict was not the final word. They hid him for three months.Notice what the text says: they “saw” and they “didn’t fear.” Seeing came first. Faith sees something before it acts on something.What did they see? The text says the child was “beautiful.” Hebrews does not tell us everything they understood about his future. It tells us that they acted by faith and would not let the king’s decree have the final word.So they hid him. Then his mother placed him in a basket among the reeds along the riverbank. They could not control what came next, but they entrusted their child to God. //Now fast-forward to verse 24. "By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." //[Let the palace scene form]Picture this. A young man raised in Pharaoh’s household, surrounded by Egyptian education, food, wealth, and power. He occupied a place of extraordinary privilege. And one day he looks at all of it and says, "This isn't mine." //Faith sees what others miss. Everybody else saw the palace and called it destiny. Moses saw the palace and called it a detour.Everybody else saw a slave nation and called it a lost cause. Moses saw a slave nation and called it God's people. ///[Look up. Ask personally. Allow time to reflect]Here's the question for us today: what has everybody around you accepted that faith would let you see differently?The career path that's slowly hollowing you out. The relationship you know God is asking you to end. The grudge everyone says you're entitled to. Faith doesn't see the way the world sees. It sees the way God sees. ///[Change slide][Look up. Slow down]2. Faith Chooses the Harder Road (vv. 25-26)"…and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin." //[Read the choice slowly. Let its cost register]Read that slowly. Moses faced a choice between present privilege and costly identification with God’s people.On one side: suffering with God’s people. On the other: “the fleeting pleasure of sin.”Faith does not choose suffering for its own sake. It chooses faithfulness to God, even when faithfulness brings suffering.Sin offers real pleasure—the text doesn’t deny that. But it is pleasure with an expiration date. //And Moses "considered." That word means to weigh, to evaluate, to run the numbers. This wasn't a moment of emotional frenzy. Moses sat down and did the math.Palace versus people. Treasures of Egypt versus the promises of God.And he concluded — verse 26 — "reproach for the sake of Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since he was looking ahead to the reward." //And do not miss how this choice fits the larger story of Hebrews 11. Moses looked ahead to the reward, but he died without entering the promised land.Like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, he trusted a promise larger than his lifetime. Faith chooses the harder road because it knows God will be faithful beyond what we live long enough to see. ///[Teaching tone. Explain carefully]I want to pause on “reproach for the sake of Christ.” Moses lived long before Jesus of Nazareth. So how does he suffer “for the sake of Christ”?Hebrews places Moses’ suffering within the story that reaches its fulfillment in Christ. Moses trusted God’s promised future, even though he could not yet see its fullness.The Passover lamb, the blood, the deliverance, and the journey toward a promised land all point us toward the salvation Christ would accomplish. //[Gentle. Speak to those carrying suffering]Now, here's where I want to be careful with you. Some of us have been taught that if we have enough faith, life gets easier. That's not the Bible.Moses' faith didn't remove suffering from his life — it ranked it. Faith doesn't make the hard road easy. Faith makes the hard road worth it. ///[Tell the illustration naturally]Imagine a retired couple living carefully on a fixed income.One month, the bank mistakenly deposits several thousand dollars into their account—almost exactly what they need for a new furnace before winter. No one calls. No letter comes. They could tell themselves it is a blessing and spend it before anyone notices.Instead, they go to the bank, report the error, and return every dollar.They still need a furnace. But they know that money belonging to someone else is not theirs to keep. Trusting God means doing what is right while the need remains. //Would that be easy? No. But faith ranks the treasures. It says, “There is something worth more than Egypt.” ///[Change slide][Look up. Shift from the cost to the One Moses trusted]3. Faith Sees the Invisible God (vv. 27-28)"By faith he left Egypt behind, not being afraid of the king's anger, for Moses persevered as one who sees him who is invisible." //[Slow. Emphasize the phrase]There's the verse I want you to carry home today. "He persevered as one who sees him who is invisible." ///That phrase is one of the great oxymorons of Scripture. Seeing the invisible. But it's exactly how faith works.Faith is not a leap into the dark. Faith is seeing what's actually there, that other people can't see yet.The invisible God is not the absent God. He's the unseen God. There's a difference. ///Notice the order in verse 27. He "left Egypt behind, not being afraid of the king's anger." Why wasn't he afraid? "For" — because — "Moses persevered as one who sees him who is invisible."The courage came from the seeing. Fear of Pharaoh dissolved in the sight of God. Not because Pharaoh got smaller, but because God got bigger. //Then verse 28: "By faith he instituted the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch the Israelites." //[Warmly. Turn toward the gospel]This is one of the clearest gospel pictures in the passage. A lamb. Its blood. Applied to a doorframe. And death passes over.Beloved, that is not only Israel's story—it prepares us to understand our story in Christ.The blood of a lamb stood between a family and death, and the Apostle Paul would later write that "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." The Passover points us to the Lamb whose blood truly saves. //[Pastoral appeal. Gentle and direct]Some of you have been trying to be good enough to be safe. You've been trying to build a righteousness of your own that will stand between you and judgment.Friend, the doorframe was never your obedience. It was always the blood. Stop whitewashing your door and trust the Lamb. ///[Change slide][Look up. Breathe]4. Faith Walks Where There Was No Road (v. 29)"By faith they crossed the Red Sea as though they were on dry land. When the Egyptians attempted to do this, they were drowned." //[Deliberate. Pause between the short sentences]Same sea. Same night. Same wind. Two groups entered. One crossed safely. One drowned.Israel followed God’s command through the way He provided. Egypt pursued the people God was delivering.The difference was not that Israel possessed extraordinary courage. Their hope rested in the God who had promised to save them. //[Reassuring tone]This is the verse that should end our obsession with the intensity of our belief. Our confidence rests in God’s faithfulness, not in our ability to manufacture strong feelings of faith.The Israelites’ faith was weak—read Exodus 14 and you’ll see them complaining to Moses before the waters parted. But their God was strong.Faith is not the size of your grip. It’s the size of the One you’re gripping. ///And notice: they crossed “as though they were on dry land.” Exodus tells us that God divided the waters and made the seabed dry before Israel entered.God made a road they could never have made for themselves. Faith meant trusting His command and walking through the way He opened. //[Look up. Turn clearly to Christ]Let me bring this home to Christ.Moses’ story points us toward its greater fulfillment in Jesus. Moses chose reproach with God’s people. Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, to save His people.Moses kept the Passover. Christ is our Passover Lamb, whose sacrifice brings the deliverance we could never accomplish for ourselves. //You see, faith doesn’t just look at Moses and try harder. Faith looks through Moses to Jesus.Jesus obeyed the Father all the way to the cross. His shed blood reconciles us to God.Because Christ has saved you, you can obey Him in whatever lies ahead, trusting Him whether He opens a way through the trouble or sustains you within it. ///[Gentle invitation. Hold eye contact]If you've been trying to muster enough faith to save yourself, stop. Faith is trust, and trust needs an object.The object is Christ. Turn from your self-sufficiency and trust Him today. ///[Look up. Gather the message]ConclusionSo here’s where we land. Our confidence rests in the One we trust. And trusting the invisible God rewrites every choice we make. //The passage has shown us faith choosing again and again. Moses’ parents chose to hide him. Moses chose God’s people over the palace, left Egypt without fearing the king, kept the Passover, and led Israel through the sea.Different choices, one direction: away from Egypt, toward God. //[Slow. Ask the question and allow silence]So what is faith asking you to choose today?Name the Egypt you are tempted to keep—the comfort you will not release, the fear that keeps deciding for you, the obedience you keep postponing, or the impossible road you refuse to take until you can see the outcome.You do not need to manufacture heroic courage.Fix your eyes on the faithful Christ, take the next clear step of obedience, and trust Him with what you cannot yet see. ///[Soften. Transition to the Lord’s Table]And that brings us to the Table. On the first Passover night, Israel stood with a hard road ahead and no power to save themselves.God did not tell them to prove the strength of their faith; He gave them a lamb, a promise, and blood on the door.They ate as people ready to leave Egypt, trusting that God would deliver them before they could see the way through. //Now Christ, our Passover Lamb, welcomes us to His meal.We do not come because we have chosen perfectly or believed strongly.We come because His body was given and His blood was shed.As we eat the bread and drink the cup, we turn from every false refuge, receive again His finished work, and entrust the road ahead to the faithful Savior. ///[Look up. Hold eye contact]Church, let's turn our eyes away from ourselves and toward Him now. ///[Invite the congregation to take the liturgy]Please take the Lord’s Supper liturgy and join me at the Lord’s table.
Hebrews 11:23–29CSB
