Doing the right thing in relation to corrupt governments is
nothing new. History is full of accounts of the kinds of evil people will do
when they have the power to carry out their wicked desires. We just happen to
be the current version of such heart-wrenching realities.
I am always encouraged to hear of doctors, politicians, and scientists who stand against the flow of corruption and put their careers (and
even their lives) on the line to tell people the truth. The accounts of
communities wising-up to the lies and deception to join the revolution, so to
speak, is certainly good news to counter the bad.
However, when I consider the ultimate in standing against
corruption, and ponder the very best ways of doing the very best for myself, my
family, my friends, and even my enemies, I must acknowledge that the most
extreme realities of corruption are coming from the spiritual realm, and the greatest
way to stand against evil is to stand for the Holy One of the universe, Jesus Christ
our Lord.
As I was meditating on the wonder of how God delights to
attach to us in what we see in his word, the Bible, I found myself in a scene
where one of the most famous figures of history, the man named Moses, had to
stand against the corruption of his day. The lessons from Moses and his parents
are so uplifting, encouraging, and motivating.
First, the background to what Moses and his parents did is in
context of an evil edict made by the king of Egypt at the time. He told the
midwives who helped the Hebrew women with their deliveries that when a child is
born, “if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she
shall live.” He then clarified this with a more explicit instruction, “Every
son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let
every daughter live.”
Does that sound evil enough to you? A wicked tyrant is
afraid that his thin thread of authority could be jeopardized by a certain
group of people so killing all the male babies to prevent the reproduction of a
whole generation makes sense. And yes, it is not difficult to find parallels in
our day!
So, then we are introduced to Moses’ parents. When Moses was
born, were they going to sacrifice their son to the Nile River just because the
King told them to? Were they going to act wickedly towards their child just because
someone in charge ordered such an evil thing against children? In other words,
were they going to let a government tell them what to do with their child just
because it was the government?!
Now, here is the short version of how Moses’ parents
responded to their predicament: “By faith Moses, when he was born, was
hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was
beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.”
Moses’ parents knew what the king’s edict was, but they were
not afraid of it. There was something of much greater value in play than the
threat of governmental repercussions. Not only were they under a much higher
authority than the king of land (that of the Creator of the ends of the earth),
but they had just brought a beautiful baby into the world and that little child
mattered far more to them than a wicked taskmaster.
What is the key word in that sentence about Moses’ parents?
FAITH!!!
Faith never stands alone. It is nothing without the object it
attaches to. So many people have put their faith in a narrative of corruption
and deception and are dropping like soap-covered maple bugs! Their faith may be
just as strong as mine, but attached to the wrong object makes it deadly!
When we read of Moses’ parents, and we read that what they
did was “by faith”, the whole context of the Bible is faith in the Only
True God, the Holy One of Israel, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God who had preserved his chosen people
through the leadership of Joseph quite some generations earlier. In other
words, their faith was in the One God revealed in the Bible and made known to
us through God the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now, as much as I am enjoying speaking to you of the faith
of Moses’ parents, that is just the setting for the life of Moses. Because his
parents were living by faith in God instead of fear of the king, God provided
for Moses by using the king’s own daughter to rescue him, care for him, and
raise him as a son of the very Pharaoh who had ordered his execution.
So, decades later, what was Moses going to do when he
discovered that his upbringing in the ways of Egypt, and his luxurious life in
Pharaoh’s household, and the genuine care he had received from his adoptive
mother, had put him on the side of the wicked government that had conspired to
kill his people and was presently oppressing them with evil burdens of slavery?
Answer: Moses was going to live by the same faith as his
parents, and of the nation that the wicked king was oppressing.
First, “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to
be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter”. Even though it was Pharaoh’s
daughter who had taken him in, saved him from the king’s wrath, and provided
for him such a luxurious lifestyle, that had positioned him in a family that
was promoting evils against the people of God. The fact that he was confronted
with such a conflict shows us that there is nothing new under the sun when we
ourselves must choose between family and God. The issue is going to be where
our faith sets its anchor. Whatever our faith is bonded to will direct how we
then behave.
Second, Moses chose “rather to be mistreated with the
people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.” Not only was
Moses aware that giving up his relationship to his adoptive mother would put
him outside the luxury he was conditioned to enjoy, but he knew that attaching
to “the people of God” would set him up to be “mistreated” just
as they were being abused. This does not mean that Moses was a sucker for
punishment. It meant that he knew where his faith ought to be anchored, and he
had to accept that the evil world he lived in would do its best to make him
suffer for rejecting its wickedness.
Third, we are given a look into Moses’ heart and mind as we
are told that, “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the
treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.” The conflict is now
clarified very precisely. Even in Moses’ day, it was between Christ and the
world. How much Moses understood of the Christ we do not know. But Moses’ faith
was in the Only True God, and Christ has always been the golden thread in the history
of God’s people, so when Moses was old enough to choose, he looked at “the
reproach of Christ” he would experience by associating with God’s people,
and he looked at “the treasures of Egypt” he could enjoy if he submitted
to the wicked leadership of his adoptive grandpa, and he knew that what he
would have with the people of God in Christ was “greater wealth” than
anything he could have by playing it safe and doing what he was told.
Part of
this was because he had intel on where the two choices would lead: the “treasures
of Egypt” would lead him into the same wickedness as his adoptive family
had perpetrated over God’s people, while “the reproach of Christ” would
lead him to “the reward” of God. And the reward of God is so vastly
superior to the pleasures of sin and luxury that putting up with reproach from
government and worldlings is a small price to pay to experience the favor of
the Creator.
Fourth, now we get to the description of Moses’ faith that put
the spotlight on this scene from history for me: “By faith he left Egypt,
not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is
invisible.”
Faith is a partnership between our relational bonds and our
reasoned beliefs. These bonds and beliefs determine how we will behave. In that
sense, everyone lives by faith. The issue is who we bond to that determines our
beliefs, and how we behave accordingly because of what those bonds and beliefs
mean to us.
In Moses’ case, his faith was not in his family. Even though
the king’s daughter was the only family he had known, family is never enough
reason to rebel against God our Creator. Even though the king had authority and
power to mistreat Moses and the people of God, because Moses’ bond was with Yahweh,
the God of Abraham, and that bond shaped what Moses believed about the world,
he was not afraid of the fact that his actions would make his adoptive grandpa
angry. He had something more important going on than what a wicked king was
doing.
And then we get the ultimate reason that Moses’ faith would
choose the good over the evil: “he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” That
is the whole thing. It explains why Moses endured. It explains why he would
throw away such a luxurious lifestyle where the pleasures of sin were not only
legal, but he was as close to the man in charge as anyone could be.
The thing that is captivating my faith this morning is what
happens when we live “as seeing him who is invisible.” There is so much
to that expression that I barely feel like I am capturing the whole scene. The
definition of invisible is, “impossible to see”. Because
God is spirit, he can’t be seen by the material eye. It is impossible!
This is why it does not say that Moses “saw” the
invisible God, but that he endured “as seeing” him. In other words, our
faith in the Living God is so real and profound that it is just like we are
seeing him. In fact, the fact that our faith sees God as real is the same as
our eyes seeing the evil tyrants of our day.
To bring ourselves into the scene, even though we can see
the evil that government leaders are perpetrating, and we can see the
repercussions of refusing to comply with their evil edicts, what our faith sees
of God through faith in Jesus Christ is more real, if you will, than what we
can see with physical sight. No evil tyrant remains in control of the whole world.
They all come and go. They boast and spout out their prideful claims and edicts
like they will live forever when the only ones who live forever are those who
receive the ever living one through Jesus Christ our Lord.
God woke me up early this morning. That has given me lots of
time to meditate on why God would ask Jeremiah, “what do you see?” Over the last week or so I have come to know
by personal experience and faith that God does this for everyone who reads his
word, he asks us every day, every morning, “what do you see?” He does
this to help us focus and concentrate. He does this to help us stop our
busyness and notice things we haven’t seen before. It is why after decades of
seeking God in his word and prayer I constantly see things I have never noticed
before, or I find connections between thoughts that have never stood out the way
they are right now. And that is why, just this morning, reading of Moses in
Exodus and Hebrews 11 brought me to that small phrase that has never attached
to my bonds and beliefs as it is right now, “as seeing him who is invisible”.
What this is
doing is beyond the words I have written. When God asks me what I see in his
word each morning, it is because he wants my faith to see him who is invisible.
He reminds me that, while “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,” he is the “God, who said, ‘Let
light shine out of darkness,’” and “has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In
other words, if Moses’ faith saw him who is invisible back in the day, we see
him who is invisible “in the face of Jesus Christ” every day of our
lives of faith.
Which is why the apostle John declared, “No one has ever
seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.”
Jesus has made the Father known to us today even clearer than Moses could have
seen him, and so Moses’ example must encourage us to live the life of faith as
our witnesses of faith modelled for us.
The bottom
line is that, if Moses’ faith in Christ enabled him to endure the wickedness of
the family that had raised him in the pleasures of sin back then, we who are
under the new covenant that is in the shed blood of Jesus Christ our Lord have
all the more clarity to feed our faith so that we will endure whatever evils
and wickedness our government leaders are expressing in our day, including
cutting (or minimizing) ties with any relationships with loved ones who are
pulling us away from the Only True God.
From my childhood, I have known that, if God is God, and if Jesus
Christ is God’s Son, the image of the invisible God, then I cannot change the
fact that I answer to the Triune, not to anyone on earth. I know what it is
like to be afraid of people and circumstances. I know what it is like to have a
fear-based identity that is terrified of being hurt. I know the piercing grief
of losing people because standing at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ is
not worth it to them.
But I also know that “faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”, and it is the invisible God
I will stand before one day and no earthly relationship, not matter how
beloved, will do anything to affect whether that is a good or bad experience. It
is Jesus Christ alone who can save me out of my sin and condemnation and give
me the eternal life I long for. And so, my faith must remain attached to him no
matter how lonely and scary that may sometimes feel.
There is a phrase that was originally stated in reference to
the firstborn son of history, Abel, “And through his faith, though he died,
he still speaks.” However, I have applied this to so many of my mentors
both in the Bible and in church history who have passed on in the flesh. Even
though they have died, their faith still speaks. And what it tells me is to
keep my eyes on him who is invisible, and surrender every day to Jesus, the
image of the invisible God, and constantly follow where he leads no matter what
I must give up on the journey, and no matter who may try to scare me into
disobedience to God. I simply have too many witnesses showing me the superiority
of the life of faith to lose what is eternal for the fleeting pleasures (and
self-protection) of sin.
Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living
creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads
and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!”
And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the
earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down
and worshiped.
© 2023
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English
Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition:
2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News
Publishers.)
