firstborn should touch them. And let's pray. Father, I pray that in our time together in the book of Hebrews, our understanding of faith would increase and our understanding of the necessity of faith in our lives would increase. that it is a biblical mandate levied upon us that we would be saved by faith and live by faith. And so I pray that you would instruct us and we would receive that instruction and admonition in Jesus' name. Amen. And you may of course be seated. Well, we have now for just about the last year, of course, been working our way through this lengthy sermon in which a group of people are being instructed and encouraged to continue in their faith. And this is not being taught to them simply because it would be good for them. not simply because they will discover at the end of all things that it was worth doing. This is being pressed upon them because it is the nature of genuine saving faith that it endures. That when Jesus Christ, our great high priest, did for us what the law could never do for us, He obtained for us an eternal salvation. The pastor is not suggesting, nor would I ever suggest, that this is not without its tense moments, not without its pitfalls, not without our failing and sinfulness, but that it is nevertheless the characteristic of genuine faith that it endures, that it continues. And so in this chapter that we think of as the Hebrews Hall of Faith, we're exposed to a variety of people, 17 by name, many others by reference, who have either with reference to their salvation in receiving it or in their lifestyle living it, are people of faith. The pastor gives, because he has given much attention to Moses early in the book as a man who was faithful to the Lord. The pastor here gives us several incidences from his life. One is about the faith of Moses' parents. Last Sunday morning our attention was on verses 24 and 25. How Moses' faith triumphed over his opportunity to be a great man in Egypt. That his commitment to the Lord, his conviction of his identification with God's people was instrumental in his departing from all that he had in Egypt to identify with the people of God in their sufferings. And the two verses that we read this morning put into perspective Moses' faith in light of fear. And we will see that, I hope clearly, this morning. It can be very beneficial for us because, let's be realistic folks, one of the great impediments to our living in faith is our fear of what that means. What will happen if I do what God tells me to do? And we have no shortage of ability to paint all kinds of horrific scenarios. I remember when we were very young adults, 22, and we were planning to move from the safety of our home hometown to go off to Bible college. I had visions of being homeless, living on the streets. This was before homelessness was even really a thing. But I could see us being homeless and trying to eat out of garbage cans that there was just no way that we were ever going to survive the experience of going to Bible college. We have been afraid of things and we have been afraid of the Lord since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. And there are always various things. There's, I think, probably no point in our lives on this side where we are out of things to fear. When we're young, we fear different things than when we are old. But there's always something to fear. And our fears are powerful things. And it's easy sometimes, even we actually ridicule people who fear things that we do not. But fears are very powerful things. And if you are truly afraid of something, it has a tremendous influence upon you, or me. I have my own things that I fear. When it comes to living by faith, we're concerned about what God would ask of us because we know that we have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of life and a limited amount of money. And it's possible that the Lord would require of us something that would interfere with what we want to do with those things. I think we'll see that the pastor will bring us to the place, rather than shrinking away from that, but of making that paramount. That it is the will of the Lord that this is the way that it would be. But it isn't just the fear of what life could look like on this side or what might happen to me. If I got saved, or even if I am saved, I don't want to tell the Lord that I would be a missionary for fear that he might make me a missionary, and then I'd have to go live in some other country. There's a lot of that kind of stuff. This is just some passion advice. I would give you this advice that I learned as a very young Christian. It is not a good idea to come up with a list of things that you'll tell God you will not do. If you think that he is not paying attention and if you think he has no sense of humor, try informing him that I'll do anything but, but I'm not doing that. So let's just take a look at the passage and let me point out to you several things from these two verses. First, I want you to see that although the verses are dealing with two different events in two periods of time, the constant is that faith is controlling his actions. In verse number 27, by faith he forsook Egypt. Verse 28, through faith he kept the Passover. In the middle of that, verse 27, he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. He persevered. He patiently kept going. This is characteristic of the entire life of Moses, I think. That he was just a man who day after day, all the time, every situation, oriented towards the Lord. He forsakes Egypt, he keeps the Passover. Now Moses is a man different than you and I in that he is the leader of a nation in both of these instances, right? Moses is not only acting individually, he is acting as the representative of an entire body of people. He is leading an entire nation out of Egypt. He is leading an entire nation into the observation of the Passover. He persevered. He saw the invisible. And your King James Bible, and I'm not trying to be critical of it, but what the text actually says is he saw the invisible. It is not that Moses, I just want to clarify, it's not like Moses saw God because nobody has ever seen God. God is genuinely invisible. Moses saw the invisible in the sense that everybody else that is mentioned in the passage sees the invisible. They have something from the Lord, a word from the Lord that is a promise that is guiding and instructing them. And to them it is a concrete reality. It is, we have seen over and over and over again, an internal conviction about an invisible reality that therefore governs their conduct. Why are you doing this? Because God told me to. And I believe the Lord. And I must do what the Lord tells me to do. This is the dimension and the nature of faith. He saw that which is invisible. In verse number 27, and I just want to mention this to you, and I don't want to bog down in it, this is not a classroom, and we're not dealing with entirely academic subjects, but you should know this. In verse number 27, opinions are divided as to the event that is actually referenced here. And that is because when Moses killed the man, and it was discovered that Moses had killed the Egyptian, he ran. And he ran away. He went into the back side of the desert. And some people say, see right there is the forsaking of Egypt. But I don't think the context allows that. I don't think that that's what is being discussed. I think it is the actual departure from Egypt. But you should know that the problem with that view is that it puts the departure from Egypt ahead of the Passover. Because first, in sequence, there is the observation of the Passover and then the departure. But I don't think that the pastor is trying to deal with it sequentially. I think he's dealing with it thematically. I think he wants you to see first the way Moses' faith is interacting with this fear, right? With this threat. There is a threat that Moses must address, and that is an angry Pharaoh. What are you going to do about a mad king? It is a legitimate question, folks. One that we have to give some consideration to. We enjoy the wonderful privilege and luxury of living in a relatively free country and living within a very free state within a relatively free country. But some of you old-timers, I'm not trying to insult you, but some of you old-timers know that it was not always that way even in Nebraska. In the late 1970s, the state of Nebraska made it illegal to send your children to a Christian school. It was illegal to homeschool your children. And we have family in the church whose dad, two families in the church whose fathers actually went to prison for what crime did they commit? Sending their children to a Christian school. The king was angry. The king was angry. What are we going to do when the king is angry? What are we going to do when the boss is angry? What are we going to do when the spouse is angry? When there is a clear word from the Lord, but there is clearly opposition to the Lord. What will we do then? This is a test of faith. So you have verse number 27. The constant in both verses is that Moses acted in faith. In verse number 27, we see his faith as relative to the anger of a human being. And again folks, we understand this, that there are angry human beings out there who are determined to oppose Christianity and its practice. They may occupy the White House, or the Governor's Mansion, or the Senate, or the House of Representatives, or the State Legislature, or the City Council, or the person who signs your paycheck. In other words, folks, there's always going to be somebody who is going to provide for us some kind of a, if I can put it this way, a legitimate context for disobedience. What will we do then? Perhaps we would argue that Moses by virtue of his unique exalted position was impervious to such fears, but I don't think so. The Bible just simply doesn't allow us to put any human being apart from Jesus Christ into some kind of unique category where they are impervious to the things that the rest of us contend with. I'm sorry, I'm just taking a look back there. I haven't lost my place, but I'm just kind of watching what's going on back there. Would you mind to take a step back there and see if you can be of any assistance? To return back to the text, folks, we don't want to do this, we're not allowed to do this with Paul, we're not allowed to do this with Moses, we're not allowed to do this with any of these Bible characters to go, well, they're really different from me. Because we're all the same, and we're all made out of the same stuff. But because Moses was a man of faith, he was not afraid of the king's wrath, verse 27. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured, seeing him who is invisible. Now, again, Moses just a guy. And when the Lord appeared to him in the burning bush, Moses said, well, I've got to see this. And God called to him and God commissioned him. You can read about it in the early chapters of Exodus. Moses had an entire list of reasons why he was not the man for the job. First of all, who am I? I'm just inconsequential. I'm nothing. And then, you know, I'm not really a leader. And then, you know, I'm not really a public speaker. In other words, Moses is a guy just like us. The fact that you and I have fears, the fact that we know what we fear, if I do this, then this could be what the result is. That just makes us human. That's just the capacity that we have as mortals to think like that. But having committed to the task, having believed the word of the Lord, having submitted to God's plan for his life, Moses from that point on, folks, appears to be relatively fearless in the presence of Pharaoh. He gets an audience with Pharaoh and insists, Exodus 5.1, Moses and Aaron went in, told Pharaoh, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. Pharaoh did not respond with, okay, you know that. He dug his heels in. He hardened his heart. He turned up the heat on the Israelites and made their lives even more miserable. So that Moses is now in the position of being unpopular with Pharaoh and with the Jews. And yet he persists because he has a word from the king and on into Exodus chapter six. on into the miracles, Exodus chapter 7, doing what the Lord told him to do. So the constant in this passage, in these two verses, is Moses' faith, and one of those is faith in light of human anger. Faith in the face of potential consequences. I think I can apply it there. The text isn't saying that. I think the application is there. If I make my life available to the Lord, what will He do with it? If I give my money to the Lord, how will I live without it? If I refrain from some sinful activity because the Lord says no. What will that mean in my life? These are all the kinds of things that we contend with. If I take this stand, if I go into work and I take this stand, what will happen to me? These are the kinds of things, folks, that we face, that we contend with. And by the way, please don't think for a moment that pastors are somehow impervious to these same kinds of temptations. If I take this stand, pastors think like this all the time. If I take this stand and make this decision, what is that going to do in the church? This is how we live. This is one dimension of the conflict. Moses is instructive to us. He saw the invisible. He saw what God had instructed and had promised, and therefore, he did not cave in to an angry Pharaoh. Secondly, verse number 28, in his faith he was afraid of God's wrath. In his faith he was afraid of God's wrath. Now again folks, Moses is a normal human being who is living an extreme set of circumstances. Probably you and I are never going to have a conversation with the President of the United States, no matter who that is. Probably you're never going to go in to the chief executive office of your company and proclaim, let my people go. But equally true, The Lord is never going to send the death angel to your house. That is the framework for what verse number 28 is arguing. Through faith he kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. No part of the contest with Pharaoh ever seemed to faze Moses, again, once he had been brought to the place of being convicted by the Lord. I mean, you can go back and read it. Moses said, really, go to Pharaoh? Why would he believe me? The Lord goes, well, what do you got in your hand? And demonstrated his miracle working power. And from that point on, Moses goes in and here it is. He is not afraid of Pharaoh, the most powerful man on the planet, but he is afraid of the angel of the Lord. And therefore, he is obedient to the instruction of God. Consistently Right? Consistent in both instances is Moses' faith, is his belief in the Lord. One dimension of that is when people are angry, and the other is when the Lord is angry. Exodus 12.3, we know the story. God said, Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of the month they shall make to them every man, take every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house, and if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor of the house take it according to the number of souls. Every man, according to his eating, shall make your count for the lamb." The institution of the Passover. Your lamb shall be without blemish and male the first year. We know all this. Exodus chapter 12 verse 5. We know, folks, that it is symbolizing This becomes the annual main religious event in Israel that is foreshadowing, symbolizing the ministry of Jesus Christ, our Lamb, without blemish, slain for us. When God said, now, well, here it is, Exodus 12, 13, the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. So again, folks, Moses is a relatively extreme illustration of what is really a very common situation. God tells us, I want you to believe these things. Here are the things that I am going to do. We have, by the way folks, in our Bible everything that we really need to know about what God is going to do. We have enough, okay? Please, please, please don't go down the pathway of arguing, well, if I had more evidence, how much more evidence would you need? I mean, if that were to be you, if somebody were to say to you, I need more evidence, wouldn't a good question be, well, what evidence would satisfy you? What evidence would bring you to faith? And then remember folks, the Bible itself is very clear. that all you need is the Bible. Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God, Romans 10, 17. Jesus said to the man burning in hell, they have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to Moses. Peter tells us we have a more certain word of prophecy than the most amazing human experience you could have. Please do not allow yourself to fall prey to making the argument if I just had more evidence. You have all that you need. So here's God speaking. Believe this about Jesus. Believe this about me. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's what the end is going to look like. Here's what's going to happen to people who don't believe me. Here's what's going to happen to people who do believe me. These are the things that I want you to do. These are the things that I don't want you to do. Now you know that in ways it gets more complicated than that, but let's not ignore the fact, folks, that it really is, on the other hand, very simple. God is our master. He tells us how to behave. If we have faith, we believe Him. We obey Him. That's just the way it is. The flip side of that is that there is always opposition. There is always some reason within or without why that will never work, why we should never do it, why we can't afford to do it, why it's a really bad idea. And to that we introduce Moses, who in his faith was able to put the pharaohs of this world in their place and put God in his place. No fear of man which brings a snare, but fear the Lord. A man of sterling faith, an exemplar of what it means to live by faith. And all because he saw that which was invisible And as we get to the end of Hebrews chapter number 11, folks, all of these people will be brought to a singular condition. None of them received the promise. There is a consistent overarching promise, right? Which I would argue to be God himself. God himself. This is what Adam and Eve surrendered. God himself. This was the promise of the Old Testament legal system. This is the promise of Christ. God himself. He saw that which was invisible and so his actions reflected his faith. Let's pray together this morning. Our Father, I pray for myself and for all of us that we would understand what you are so laboriously trying to explain to us. That there is more to having faith in God than simply saying we do. But that when it comes to salvation, we are resting the state of our eternal souls on the finished work of Christ. And when it comes to our daily lives, we are endeavoring to live in obedience to the scriptures. May our faith then be strong and great and mighty. May it be an example to those around us as Moses was an example to those around him. I pray this for us in Christ's name, amen.