For Those Who Live By Their Faith—Quitting Is Not An Option!
Hebrews 11:27
He was young, enthusiastic, passionate, vibrant, energetic, and everything a church could want in a pastor. He loved the Lord and he loved his people. His preaching opened up the Word of God to them and helped them grow in their faith. He never missed a hospital visit or being there when one of his flock was hurting. When members of the church were struggling in their walks with the Lord or with some heavy burden, or with serious sin issues—he exemplified to them the grace of God and helped them to see the power of God’s forgiveness. His ministry of preaching about and exemplifying the love and the grace of God touched their hearts but for some reason or another was unable to get through to his own.
He had a secret that no one knew about—a secret sin that he had given into and which no one not even those closest to him ever could have imagined. He hated the sin and he hated himself. And whereas, he had helped several over the course of his ministry overcome the destructive spiral of not applying God’s promises of forgiveness and grace to their own lives and their own sin—he just couldn’t see how God could forgive him—after all, he was the pastor—and thus, the one man in that church who simply had no excuse for what he did. Nor did he have any recourse for to seek help and counsel from another would be to admit his failure and that would be to lose his livelihood and the ability to care for his family because that’s what happens to pastors who fail. He thought often about quietly leaving the ministry but knew he had nowhere else to go. And so one day while overwhelmed with depression and with a great sense of desperation and unable to deal with his guilt any longer on a Sunday morning early before the first car pulled into the parking lot he did the unthinkable—he while sitting in his car—pulled out a handgun and killed himself.
I wish that story was not true. The fact of the matter is that it is. The reason I tell it is not for shock value. The reason I tell it is because this young pastor who failed miserably in falling to temptation in life failed even more miserably in death in that he made the choice not to believe that God had forgiven him and desired to restore him to himself and to his service. In choosing to sin in the first place he failed to live by his faith thinking that in that sin he would find an excitement and a pleasure God could not give him. In the second place—in choosing not to apply the scriptural principles of forgiveness and restoration to himself—he failed again to live by faith and this proved fatal.
Today I want to take a look at another man who also was vibrant, energetic, and full of plans to help and minister to his people—but who in one moment of anger—did the unthinkable—he murdered a man. And once the gravity of what he had done set in and the consequences for his action began to materialize before him he had a choice to make and that choice is what we are going to talk about today. Turn with me to Hebrews 11:27 where I want us to see that:
Believers who live by faith still sin but when they do they don’t quit—they realize that failure, even great and devastating failure, can be overcome in God’s time and in God’s way.
When believers who are committed to living by faith, don’t and fail miserably as a result they must not give into their emotions and sentence themselves to spiritual exile away from God’s fellowship and service, rather they must choose to live by faith in that moment when it is hardest to do so and appropriate God’s promises of forgiveness and restoration.
1. If we wish to live by faith we must choose to believe God’s promises even when we have failed Him greatly and feel unworthy of His love, forgiveness, and desire to ever use us again. (27)
Hebrews 11:27 has produced a great deal of discussion and used up a lot of ink over the years as to which of Moses’ departures from Egypt is the writer talking about. To many, like John MacArthur, A.W. Pink, and the Puritan scholar John Owen it seems only natural that this verse would be referring to Moses’ second departure when he left Egypt in victory with all the Hebrews in tow. When Moses left Egypt this time it was a glorious and celebrative affair—without even a hint of fear. Thus, to the casual observer this must be the event the author is speaking about rather than Moses’ first departure from Egypt after he had killed a man and did leave in fear. But others, such as R.C. Sproul, John Piper, Leon Morris, and most of the early church fathers see this verse referring to Moses’ first departure from Egypt after he killed the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew slave. Others still, like John Calvin, see both departures as being possibilities but leaned toward the verse speaking about the Exodus. I am going to weigh in on the side of verse 27 being Moses’ first departure and here’s why.
In a chapter that is detailing the lives of many of God’s people in chronological order as well as making mention of individual events in their lives in chronological order—it seems odd that the writer would divert from that pattern now and insert Moses’ second departure from Egypt before the Passover mentioned in verse 28, when the Passover came first.
Second, why does the writer of Hebrews go out of his way to make this point about Moses not being afraid of Pharaoh if he is referring to the Exodus when Pharaoh is pleading with him to leave after the death angel passed through and killed their firstborn sons. There simply was no fear involved in that event other than what Pharaoh and the Egyptians were feeling.
Third, verse 27 only makes mention of him leaving Egypt rather than him and all of the Israelites, thus pointing to his first departure when only he left.
And fourth, this letter is being written to Jewish Christians who having given great consideration to leaving the Faith due to persecution are now wondering if even in considering denouncing Christ to save their homes, jobs, and lives they had gone too far and thus should just give it up altogether.
Thus, for all these reasons I think the better way to understand the verse and thus, the intent and meaning of the author is to see this event spoken of in verse 27 as being in chronological order and thus, being Moses’ first departure from Egypt when he did leave being afraid of the King but did not leave because he was afraid of the King.
There is a huge difference in being afraid of someone or something and allowing that fear to be the primary motivating factor in the decisions you make in life. Let me illustrate this for you. Soldiers, police officers, and fire personnel will all tell you that they experience a certain amount of fear when called to go into a situation that is dangerous and has the potential of seriously injuring or even killing them. Fear is natural in those kinds of situations—but they still go into them because even though fearful—the fear is not the primary motivating factor in their decision.
Now lets review the facts of Moses’ first departure from Egypt and see if we can make sense of this verse. The Bible tells us that Moses knew that he was to be the deliverer of Israel. This is seen in Acts 7:25, where we read that after he had decided to go out and visit the Hebrews, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew.
Lets read about it—go to Exodus 2:11-12.
Now don’t miss the gravity of what Moses did. It is best felt when you understand that Moses had no problem striking a man down and then continually hitting him until he was dead and then burying his body in the sand. But worse than that—Moses did not have to kill him. He could have ordered him to stop beating the Israelite and this Egyptian would have obeyed him, after all, Moses was the Prince of Egypt. But, Moses gave into his passion—a passion every bit as strong and as wrong as sexual immorality—and he struck the Egyptian man over and over again until he was dead(Hiphil Imperfect Tense)--Hardly the kind of man you’d think God would still be considering to lead His people. And it was obvious that Moses knew he was in the wrong because in Exodus 2:12, we read that before striking the Egyptian, “he looked this way and that and when he saw that there was no one around he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” But he suppressed his sin and his guilt and figured that it would be no big deal to the Hebrews because obviously they would see this as him beginning to deliver them from their oppressors. He was wrong, for the next day according to Exodus 2:13-14, he tried to intervene in a fight between two Hebrews and had his good intentions rejected. But not only was he rejected as the deliverer of the Hebrews—he was informed that his crime had been seen and that he was found out.
In Exodus 2:15, we read that when Pharaoh found out about it that he tried to kill Moses and then Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh to the land of Midian across the Red Sea in the Sinai Peninsula. So yes, Moses was afraid of the King and he did run away to Midian but did he primarily run because of this fear or was there something else motivating him to leave Egypt even more powerful than fear. Yes, I believe so. It was faith. Notice that Hebrews 11:27 tells us why he left and it was not fear. It was faith and it was a faith that was motivated by “endurance” or “perseverance”.
Now what was it that he endured and persevered in? That is the question we need to answer to understand all this. Well, again the key is found in Acts 7:25. Moses knew that he was to be God’s instrument in delivering his people. But Moses sinned in that he in zealous passion tried to do God’s work in his own way and according to his own time table. He sinned greatly in killing a man under the pretenses of doing a work for God. And he has nowhere to hide. I mean the Hebrews don’t want him and the Egyptians are going to kill him but that is not what is the primary motivating influence in his life right now. Yes, he is afraid and yes, he knows if he stays he will be killed—so he runs but not solely out of fear but rather because as bad as what he did was, in murdering the Egyptian and as colossal a failure, as he had just become—he did not lose his faith.
He still believed that God would forgive him and would not cast him out as unusable and unwanted merchandise. He chose to believe in that moment the promise that God had somehow communicated to him that God was going to deliver His people through Him and that somehow, someway God would fix this and still use him and so he runs to a place of safety to see how the Lord is going to fix this mess he had made. I think Moses exercised faith in simply not quitting and walking off the field when everything in his being was screaming at him to do so because he, like any of us, if it was us, was probably feeling pretty unworthy of God’s love and acceptance anymore.
In essence, the choice Moses made in living by his faith in this particular incident was the choice to believe that even his sin as great as it was could not and would not change God’s mind about him or God’s plans for him.
Thus, instead of doing as so many of us do when we sin and just give up and put ourselves on the shelf figuring God is done with us and has consigned himself to putting up with us for the rest of our lives—Moses persevered in believing that he was still accepted by God, acceptable to God, and able to be restored and used by God in the future when God’s hand of healing and correction had done its work.
Now I realize there are some who have a problem with this whole idea of me suggesting to people that God can fix even our worst and most devastating failures in life and they have this problem because they think I am not emphasizing the seriousness of the sin. That’s not true—because I am—the real problem they are having is that they are not emphasizing the seriousness of God’s grace! Moses chose to emphasize the wondrous power of God’s grace rather than his sin and thus, he ran to save his life not because he feared death but because in faith he knew God was not finished with him yet.
The easy thing in his despair would be to give himself up to Pharaoh and be killed—that would be like being put out of his misery. Kind of like “suicide by cop” only this would be “suicide by Pharaoh”. And how many Christians have thought about that very thing—after failing God by involving themselves in some unthinkable heinous sin? How many Christians today are no longer serving God in any capacity at all but are rather sitting on their duffs dusting a pew because they chose not to believe that God still loves, accepts, and desires to restore them not only to himself but to ministry for Him. That, you see, is the real battle of faith. It is very hard for a believer who has sinned greatly to trust that God still loves him, accepts him, finds him acceptable, and desires to utilize him in productive service.
Our tendency is to feel so unworthy and so unacceptable to God that we cower from Him and run from Him rather than to Him. But not Moses—he persevered in his faith and believed that God was not finished with him and would still use him to deliver his people.
Note at the end of verse 27 that it says, “for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.” What does this mean? This is not speaking about over 40 years later when Moses was given the chance to see the backside of God’s glory. No, the participle “seeing Him who is unseen” is occurring as Moses is making his choice to give up on himself thinking God had given up on him or to persevere in the promise of God. And it is not that Moses saw an image of God in that moment because the verse plainly states that God is unseen.
So what did Moses see that gave him a clear vision of God that caused him not to quit in spite of terrible failure? I think Moses saw with clarity the promises of God, which were a reflection of the character of God for him. Moses saw God in His promises—thus for him—seeing the promises of God was as if He were seeing God Himself. And these promises that his mother had taught him when he was but a young boy and which God had confirmed to him as he grew into a man and which led him to make a decision to forsake all the riches and power of Egypt to obey God so as to receive heavenly reward—were the very thing that got him through the worst failure of his life.
Moses saw that God’s promises are not subject to the successes and failures of his servants. And so, even in the midst of his failure, he lived by his faith and did not put himself on the shelf but rather persevered in his belief that God still loved him, accepted him, and would use him in spite of his great sin and failure. Listen, to stay in the race even after you have failed because you believe God’s promises of forgiveness and restoration is to live by faith. That was what Jesus prayed for in regard to Peter and his failure. Look at Luke 22:31-32.
CONCLUSION
You know, Moses’ failure and the way he dealt with his failure is recorded by God in Hebrews 11 because God wants us to see that even with the best of intentions and even while desiring to make much of Christ—we still fail and sometimes quite miserably—but that we cannot quit. Rather, like Moses we need to live by hard, gutsy faith and give our failures to God and embrace His forgiveness even when we feel so unworthy of it. And the fact is we are unworthy of it and always have been and always will be. But neither our successes nor our failures as a Christian matter when it comes to God being more apt to forgive and accept us after we have failed.
To better help you tie Moses’ failure and response to his failure into your life—look at Hebrews 12:1. Moses is one of those witnesses that is crowding the track as you run your race and you know what he is saying to you the believer who has failed and failed greatly and realizes it—He is saying—“Look at me—I failed too—and I failed far worse than you have but I didn’t quit—so don’t you quit either—quitting is not an option for those who live by faith—get back up and resolve to live and fail by your faith!
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