Day 30

Chose to suffer

To Start

I hope you’ve been taking time at the beginning of each period of meditation to sit still and be silent. If you’ve never practiced silence before it can be hard to understand what value it provides. This isn’t the spot for a lesson on contemplation, but let me offer one real benefit: Silence offers relief from the constant efforts of the mind. In silence we put down thinking. It’s a kind of surrender to peace. R.S. Thomas says, “the silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind.”

Don’t you need a tamed mind? I do.

If you’re feeling bold today, try to sit in stillness for ten minutes. “All it takes” is surrender. :)

Pray

Yahweh, thank You for meeting me in the quiet. Now, please, speak through Your Word. Show me my heart.

Copy

It’s Tuesday—which means we’re copying another section of Hebrews 11. Be sure to keep your index card on you this week. You never know when you’ll need it.

Hebrews 11:24-31

²⁴ By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter ²⁵ and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin. ²⁶ For he considered reproach for the sake of Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since he was looking ahead to the reward.

²⁷ 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. 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. 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.

³⁰ By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after being marched around by the Israelites for seven days. ³¹ By faith Rahab the prostitute welcomed the spies in peace and didn’t perish with those who disobeyed.

Read

Today we’re focusing on verses 24-27. As you read…

• Ask Yahweh to help you see and understand.

• What does Moses do “by faith” here?

• Did Moses know Christ? What does the author mean when he says Moses “considered reproach for the sake of Christ to be greater wealth”?

• What are “the fleeting pleasures of sin” Moses might have indulged in should he have wanted to?

• What reward was Moses “looking ahead to”?

When you’re finished reading, summarize the paragraph in your own words.

Hebrew 11:24-27 (CSB)

²⁴ By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter ²⁵ and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin. ²⁶ For he considered reproach for the sake of Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since he was looking ahead to the reward. ²⁷ 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.

From JL

Maybe you’re asking yourself, “Is this a bit of revisionist history? Didn’t Moses flee Egypt after killing an Egyptian? That doesn’t seem like choosing suffering over pleasure. It seems like running away from consequences.”

I’m wondering the same thing myself. Here’s the Exodus account of the moment Moses grew up and left Egypt:

Years later, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his people. ¹² Looking all around and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hid him in the sand. ¹³ The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you attacking your neighbor?”

¹⁴ “Who made you a commander and judge over us?” the man replied. “Are you planning to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”

Then Moses became afraid and thought, “What I did is certainly known.”

¹⁵ When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well.

Hmm…

I’m not seeing what the Hebrews writer is seeing.

But the Hebrews writer isn’t the only one to read this passage in Exodus as evidence of Moses’ changed allegiance. Here’s what Stephen, the first Christian martyr, says:

“When he was forty years old, [Moses] decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. ²⁴ When he saw one of them being mistreated, he came to his rescue and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. ²⁵ He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand.

Both the Hebrews writer and Stephen interpreted Moses’ act of murdering the taskmaster as a declaration of identity. Both seem to have attached significant meaning to the phrase, “he went out to his own people” (Exodus 2:11).

It’s not often that we get a look at how early Christians interpreted Old Testament passages. Given that both the Hebrews writer and Stephen were full of the Spirit when they wrote/spoke, we can assume the Spirit was leading their understanding of the story.

Today’s Christians usually categorize Moses’ murder of the Egyptian as a moment of moral failure. However, many Jewish scholars argue that it was actually a moment of courageous moral clarity.

Either way, this moment is the moment when Moses crosses a line in the sand. He can’t go back to being Egyptian. Evidently, he made that choice not in angry haste but with deliberate faith.

The writer of Hebrews has an angle. Don’t forget it. He’s trying to convince Jews to embrace Jesus as their destiny, inheritance, and identity. But Jews think they already have all of that in Moses. That’s why we find him linking Moses to Christ explicitly.

But did Moses know Christ? Did he have conscious knowledge of bearing Christ’s reproach?

We don’t know. We do know Moses spent a lot of time in the presence of the triune God. We also know he joined Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration before Jesus went to the cross. Maybe he did have a grasp on Who Jesus was and what He’d one day do. Maybe not.

That’s not so much the point here. The point is that Moses was prefiguring Christ. He left behind a palace and riches to suffer with the people, and he did it (as Jesus did) with anticipation of future reward. In other words, by faith.

Last thing: What about the Hebrews writer saying, “By faith he left Egypt behind, not being afraid of the king’s anger”? Doesn’t Exodus say, “Then Moses became afraid and thought, ‘What I did is certainly known.’”?

Here’s commentator F.F. Bruce (quoting A.S. Peake) on verse 27:

Our author, who follows the Biblical text so closely, certainly does not intend to contradict it, but rather to interpret it. “The fear of Moses is not immediately connected with his flight in the Hebrew story, so that the author may have felt warranted by this in denying that the flight was due to fear.” He was afraid, admittedly, but that was not why he left Egypt; his leaving Egypt was an act of faith. “By faith he left Egypt, and not because he feared the Lord’s anger” (NEB). By his impulsive act of violence he had burned his boats as far as the court of Egypt was concerned; but he might have raised a slaves’ revolt there and then. By faith, however, he did nothing of the kind; “he had the insight to see that God’s hour had not yet struck, and therefore he resolutely turned his back on the course he had begun to tread, and retraced his steps until he entered on the harder way. For it was harder to live for his people than it was to die for them.”

Maybe that? Maybe some other explanation. Certainly, the Spirit is guiding our writer and leading Him into revelation.

Process

• How does weighing present suffering vs future reward help us make decisions? Is that a tool you use when making choices?

• How do we choose to suffer with the people of God? Is it possible you have privileges that serve as protections against suffering? What might it look like to surrender those privileges in order to suffer in solidarity? What’s an example of choosing suffering—something you’ve done or something you’ve seen people do? Spend some time with this question today. Let God show you the beginning of an answer.

Pray

Yahweh, show me where I’ve allied myself with power. Enable me to choose to suffer with Your suffering people. Reveal to me what fleeting pleasures I’m refusing to put down.

In the Comments

I think the line, “Moses chose to suffer with the people of God” is fascinating, especially in a culture where we avoid suffering at all costs. Is this choice relevant to us today at all? Mostly I’d just love to hear what you’re hearing from God as you consider Moses’ example.

Godspeed,

JL