Kootenai Church Morning Worship

We are looking at the faith of Moses, the great lawgiver of Israel. He was not just the giver of the law, he was a man of great faith. And we've been seeing over the last couple of weeks how it is that Moses obeyed the Lord and demonstrated his faith by obeying the Lord and choosing to be affiliated with and to cast his lot in with the people of God, the Israelites, instead of the Egyptians. And Moses did this knowing that he would be rewarded for it. Moses's faith contained a strong assurance of the reward that was set before him. And as he trusted in the Lord, he did so and made his decision looking forward to and anticipating a reward that was to come.
He's a great example of the faith that is described in Hebrews 11:6, that the one “who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” The faithful believes both of those things, not just that God exists, though we have never seen Him with our eye, but we believe that He exists and we believe that He will reward the one who comes to Him and seeks after Him. There is a reward that is set out ahead of those who are faithful.
And so today we are examining Moses’s choice that he made in light of the reward. Hebrews 11. We're looking at the end of this passage, verses 24–26:
24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter,
25 choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin,
26 considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward. (NASB)
Now, we have looked so far at Moses's faith, his choice between two peoples, between Israel and Egypt, his choice between two positions, slavery and royalty, and today we're looking at the third element of Moses's choice, and that is choosing reproach over treasure.
And when we talk about his choice between two positions, slavery or royalty, we have to make sure that we have clear in our mind that Moses’s choice was not merely an ethnic identification. Everybody knew that he was a Jew, but it was the choice of a spiritual affiliation. Moses was choosing to be spiritually affiliated with the people of God's covenant, the descendants of Abraham. And so it's more than just “I like Jewish food” or “I like the way the Jews dress” or “I like the songs that the Jews sing.” It wasn't that kind of affiliation. It was “I will worship the God that the Jews worship, and I will therefore benefit and receive all of the blessings that are promised to that nation.” It's a spiritual affiliation that Moses was signing up for when he chose Israel over Egypt.
So today we're looking at these two prizes: reproach and treasure. Now, those two things don't sound like they go together at all. It doesn't even sound like reproach—I sound like a guy going through puberty, don't I?—it doesn't even sound like reproach is a prize at all. And yet those are the two things that are offered to Moses—reproach and treasures. And so how is it that a reproach would be considered to be valued as something that is better than all the treasures of Egypt?
In fact, it is verse 26—“Considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.” Verse 26 explains to us why it is that Moses chose Israel over Egypt, why it is that he chose to be affiliated with a slave people instead of being affiliated with royalty, as he certainly had the option to do. See, from a worldly perspective, Moses chose a people without any kind of a national identity. I mean, they were Jews. They had an ethnic identity, but they didn't have a homeland that they were from, that they had been taken out of. They didn't have any kind of national status. Nobody in Moses's time could say, “Well, you know where all those Jews live. They're out there, and this is the boundaries of their habitation.” No, they were slaves in Egypt, so they had no homeland, they had no national identity in that sense. They certainly had no wealth. So Moses was choosing a people with no wealth over a people who had abundant wealth. From a worldly perspective, it didn't seem right that he would choose slavery over royalty, pain over pleasure, or poverty over wealth. He really was embracing reproach and giving up all of the respect that would be due to him as a member of the royal family, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter.
And this type of a choice, Moses’s commitment, listen, is completely inexplicable apart from his faith. And so in verse 26, when it says that he considered “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of Egypt,” he was looking for the reward. Moses saw something with the eyes of faith that nobody else could see, namely that which would come to the faithful believer. And because Moses was able to see that, he was able to make a choice in light of that truth. And he did so by faith.
Faith explains that he saw what others did not. He looked beyond the immediate and he saw something that was far in the future. He looked far ahead and he said, “What comes to me on the basis of choosing Israel now is far greater than what will come to me now if I choose Egypt over Israel.” And so it is only in light of that faith, it is only because Moses saw something that nobody else could see, that his choice makes any sense at all. His faith made him assured of what he hoped for. His faith made him convinced of what he could not see. By faith he believed in God, and by faith he believed that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
And this theme of reward that is mentioned in verse 26 is a constant theme through the larger passage. In fact, we could go all the way back into the previous chapter, the end of Hebrews 10, that warning passage, where at the end of that chapter and at the end of that warning passage, the author reminds us that, far from falling away, the ones who remain faithful to God in the midst of tribulations and reproaches and all of that, they can expect a reward that is to come. Hebrews 10:34:
34 For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing you have for yourselves [now listen to all of this language of reward] a better possession and a lasting one.
35 Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.
36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. (Heb. 10:34–36 NASB)
All of that is the language of reward—a better possession, a lasting possession, receive what is promised, maintain your confidence because you have a reward. The author is holding out the prospect of a reward to those Hebrew Christians who are facing affliction and persecution and suffering, and he is saying to them, “Look, if you will embrace the reproach of faith, you will receive the reward of faith.” And most certainly only those who are willing to endure the reproach will receive the reward. If you shrink back to destruction, if you ease out of the affliction that you're faced with so that you can have more comfort or more convenience or something else, then you certainly should not expect to receive the reward.
Now let's look at Moses's two options: the treasures of Egypt and the reproaches of Christ. The treasures of Egypt—this is not a difficult thing to understand at all, what is meant by the treasures of Egypt. It’s a little bit more difficult to understand what is meant by the reproaches of Christ. We'll get to it here in just a moment. But by the treasures of Egypt, the author would obviously mean the wealth of a world dynasty.
Whenever it is that we might land on a date for the exodus, and I think I have arrived at an actual date for the exodus because somebody gave me a book—didn't give it to me, lent it to me. Sorry, Simon, I know you didn't give me the book. You lent it to me. Somebody lent me a book with an archaeologist who nails down a date for the exodus. So I'm going to get to that next week with verse 27. But whenever it is that we might think that the exodus happened, we know that when Moses lived, Egypt was one of the world's dynasties. And they would have had with that dynasty all of the wealth that one could imagine that would come to the royalty of that dynasty. It would have been money and gold and precious stones, precious items. They were a wealthy people, the Egyptians. Now, yeah, they were a wealthy people because they were able to build a lot of their wealth off the backs of slave labor. But that wealth would have also included prestige and honor, the comforts and conveniences, the pleasures and delights that money can buy you. And money, though it can't buy happiness, it can buy some comfort and it can buy some conveniences. And the Egyptians would have had all of that.
And in Moses's case, he wouldn't have been just a common Egyptian. He would have been an Egyptian who was known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He would have been the grandson of Pharaoh. So he would have had access to all of that wealth, all of those treasures, and he would have had access to the honor and respect and the dignity and the approbation and the public applause that would have gone along with being the grandson of Pharaoh. And yet he chose instead the reproaches of Christ over all the treasures of Egypt.
Now, that phrase, the reproaches of Christ, it's a little bit more difficult to understand what is meant by that simply because the idea of Moses choosing the reproaches of Christ doesn't seem to fit with Moses in the timeline for this reason: Moses lived at least fourteen hundred years before Christ. So how is it then that Moses would have seen his choice of Israel as being an embrace of the reproaches of Christ? Or better stated, how would the author of Hebrews have understood that Moses, in choosing Israel, was choosing the reproaches of Christ since Christ was not born for another fourteen hundred years after Moses? What is meant by that phrase?
We understand what it means in our context. If we are affiliated with or we join our forces with or are known as being amongst the people of God, we understand what it means to bear His reproach in that sense, that we name the name of Christ. We are referred to as Christians. We're called “Christ ones.” And as those who embrace His truth and name His name and worship Him on a Sunday morning, that is part of our identity. We are Christians first and Americans second. We're not American Christian, we’re Christians who happen to live in America. That is our primary identity. And we could be Christians that live in any other country.
But if you are known as a Christian and that is your primary identity, then when Christ is reproached and Christians are reproached, then you are reproached because you're in that group. So as those who identify with Jesus Christ, we know that when the world heaps its hatred and scorn on Christians and on the Christian church and charges Christians with being homophobic and xenophobic and hateful and bigoted and intolerant and all of the other slander that goes along with that, they do so because they're really heaping their scorn upon Christ. And when they heap their scorn upon Christ, we are the recipients of it because we are the visible manifestation of Christ in this world. And so if the world is going to hate Him, it must hate Him by hating us because the only way that the world can get to Him is through us. And so we become then the recipients of that reproach. So we understand what the reproaches of Christ are.
But fourteen hundred years before Jesus was born, nobody ever heard the name of Christ. Nobody knew the name Jesus Christ. So what is meant by Moses choosing instead the reproaches of Christ? In what way?
There's a couple of different options, a couple of different ways of understanding this. First, it's possible that what is meant by this is that Moses was a deliverer for the nation of Israel. And as a deliverer, he stood as a Christ figure for the nation. Let me work this out just a little bit. We all understand that Jesus's last name was not Christ. We refer to Him as Jesus Christ, but Christ was not His last name. He was Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth, but He is Jesus the Christ, Christ being the word for or the title of Anointed One or Messiah. It's a messianic designation. So He is Jesus the Christ. And so it's possible that the term Christ in this passage—reproaches of Christ—simply refers to the reproaches that come to one who is a deliverer or a redeemer.
And Moses was for the nation of Israel a deliverer or redeemer. Moses is the one who confronted Pharaoh and led the children of Israel out of Egypt. And so it might be that what the author is referring to is the reproaches of one that would be heaped upon the individual who would serve as the instrument through which God would deliver an entire nation. Moses then, functioning as a messiah figure or a messianic type of a deliverer for an entire nation, and because he did that and he did the work of delivering the nation, Moses himself then would have had heaped upon him all of the reproaches from Egypt upon the one who would seek to deliver those who were slaves to Egypt. It's possible that it's not a reference to Christ as we know Him but Christ as in the function of deliverer that Moses took, that he would choose the reproaches of being a national deliverer for that nation over all the treasures of Egypt. That's a solid possibility. I think it's a solid number two.
Not number one yet, but another solid two is the possibility that what's being described here is Moses as a type of Christ, a foreshadowing figure of Christ. And in this sense, Moses functions as well as a foreshadowing of the one who is the national deliverer, the one who is the deliverer from sin, the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses as a type or a foreshadowing of Christ Himself therefore would receive all of those reproaches, being one who functions in the way as a national deliverer. Because the deliverance of Israel from Egypt in the exodus becomes something of a precursor, almost a prequel to the actual storyline, which is the delivery of slaves of sin out of the bondage of sin by one who is actually the Christ, and because Moses's life parallels Jesus's life in many ways, Moses then becomes a foreshadowing or a prophetic sort of biographical figure of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as such, he would, of course, receive all of the world's scorn. That's another solid number two possibility.
But I think that what is being described here is Moses’s willingness to suffer with the people of the Christ—that is, the Messiah's people. There was in Moses’s day a strong messianic hope. That messianic hope goes all the way back to Genesis 3 when it was promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head. And that messianic hope comes all the way through that godly lineage that comes up through Noah and through his godly descendants and of which Abraham is then made aware. In fact, you see this messianic hope and this expectation of a national deliverer even in Jacob's blessing of his twelve sons on his deathbed when he says of Judah in Genesis 49:10, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” I want you to ponder on that for a second. That was very profound. While I sip on that.
So they would have had a robust understanding in Moses’s day that there was going to be a messianic deliverer, one who would fulfill the promise of even being the one through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. And that was part of the hope. That was part of Joseph's hope and Jacob's hope and Isaac's hope and Abraham's hope and Noah's hope and Enoch's hope and Abel's hope. It was part of all of that godly lineage's hope that there would be this national deliverer. So just because all of the New Testament hadn't been written and most of the Old Testament hadn't been written, you and I should not begin to think that those who lived in Moses’s day had no expectation of what was to come. They had a very rich and robust understanding of what God's redemptive plan was through this Christ deliverer.
So therefore Moses would suffer reproach by being with the people of God and embracing for himself that messianic hope. This is why I pointed out last week and this week that it's not merely an ethnic identification, it is a spiritual affiliation. When Moses reached out and embraced the Jewish people, he was embracing their God and their hope. And therefore he was saying, “I am believing in this. I am trusting in this. I'm casting my lot in with these people, and therefore their God is my God, their hope is my hope, their future is my future, and therefore their reproach will be my reproach.” So since he embraced the Messiah and the messianic hope of a Messiah, then he embraced along with that all of the reproach that Egypt and the world and that unbelievers would cast upon him for his embrace of the truth.
Another way to think of it is that Moses, living before Christ, would be looking forward to the appearance of that Christ, and therefore, along with David and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Noah and everybody else who was scorned and reproached for their love of and embrace of the truth, he had that hope. And because he had that hope and he was reproached for it, it becomes then a messianic or a Christ-centered reproach that he bears, just as you and I, living after Christ, look back to the appearance of Christ. And therefore, though we have more revelation, all of the reproach and the scorn that is heaped upon us is heaped upon us because we are looking to the same messianic hope and figure. So before Christ or after Christ, all those who embrace God's truth and God's Word and have their hope in that Christ, all of them bear the reproach of Christ.
So therefore we can say that anybody who has suffered for Yahweh's truth have borne Yahweh's reproach. Psalm 69:9: “Zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.” This is what every true believer can say, that I'm so aligned in my purposes and my faith with Yahweh, the one true and living God, that when He is reproached, those reproaches, though they are aimed at Him, they fall down and hit us. They fall upon us. So the reproach of those who have reproached You have fallen on me.
And we are called then to be like Moses, to go outside the camp and to bear Christ's reproach (Heb. 13:13). So when you suffer as a believer for doing what is right and for having true faith, you are suffering the same kind of reproach and the same Christ-centered, messianic reproach that was also suffered by Jeremiah and Isaiah and Noah and Moses and Joseph and all those who embrace that hope.
Now, what is the role of reproach? How is it that the world sees the truth? The world hates the truth. This is becoming more and more obvious to us with each and every passing day. You see how they respond to God's truth regarding gender, how they respond to God's truth regarding human sexuality, God's moral standards, the truth about marriage, the truth about Scripture, the truth about Heaven and Hell, all of those truths, all of those things which are part of our faith, which we embrace by God's grace. The world hates that and heaps its scorn upon it.
And reproach is something that always precedes persecution. And here is why: reproach is how the world justifies its treatment of Christians. You see, the world knows—they can look and see the same thing that you and I see. The Christians are the ones who are working with the sick and starting up hospitals and feeding the poor and taking care of widows and orphans and gathering together and doing good. Atheists don't start hospitals. Atheists don't start research on disease. Those things—that's not the purview of the world at all. It's Christians who do that. And so the world must look at Christians and say, “These are the people that stand out for their good deeds, their charitable deeds, and because they're living in accordance with the truth.” But being unable to lobby any serious reproach or scurrilous scandal against true Christians, the world instead heaps its scorn upon Christians and begins to reproach them. Well, you're homophobic bigots, or you're intolerant xenophobes, or you're just hateful people who want transgender people not to exist, and you just want to wipe out everybody that's not a Christian. And none of that is truthful at all, but the world has to reproach those things so that it can justify in its own mind how it wants to treat Christians.
And they treat us that way not because they hate our good deeds but because they hate what we believe and they hate the God that we serve. And so their reproach becomes then a precursor and an excuse for their persecution. Jesus said in Matthew 5:11, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.”
Moses’s example would have been a tremendous encouragement to these early Hebrews because chapter 10, verses 32–33, says, “Remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.” The unbelievers of their day had heaped scorn and reproach upon those early Christians. And what a comfort it would be for them to be able to say, “Ah, yes, Moses, the great lawgiver. All those who have come before us. We're in that category. We're in that group. Those were our people. That's our tribe. They're the ones that we come from.”
You and I, looking back, can do the exact same thing. We can say yeah, they treated Moses like this. Unbelievers treated Joseph like this. Unbelievers treated Luther like this. Unbelievers treated Calvin like this. Whitfield, Edwards, all the great saints of history have been treated in this way. The world has heaped its scorn on all of them. We ought to expect nothing better. And so when something better comes our way, we ought to be somewhat surprised. Whoa, hey, I wasn't hated by somebody today. I might need to get out more. And then when we are hated by somebody in that day, we should say, “This is exactly what I should expect.” We should expect no different from the world. So then when it happens, we're not surprised. Instead, when we meet the world's hatred, we can look at it and say, “This is how the world treats the people of God. So I am in very good company with Moses and the rest of them.”
And here's the difference, you and I might give up nothing to be treated that way. We might give up nothing to be treated that way. Moses chose to be treated that way because he had a different option. He gave up everything just so he could be treated that way. That was the choice he made. How much greater then was his understanding of what it is that he was doing?
That word considered at the beginning of verse 26 means to esteem, to regard, to think, or to assess. It describes a reasoned and rational assessment of his circumstances, not a rash and thoughtless emotional response. It was not a decision that Moses made in the heat of a moment, but it was a deliberate and well-considered decision that he made. Moses was a man who had thought through and weighed all of it in the balances. He looked at the messianic hope of Israel. He looked at the promises that had been given to his forebearers and forefathers by God, and he looked at his present circumstances. And Moses took some time to reason this through and to think this through in a very reasoned and rational and thoughtful process. He weighed all of it in the balances, and he decided that he was going to value instead the reproach that would come by being aligned with the Christ-forward-looking people of God than the treasures of Egypt. And he made his decision on that basis. And it was all expressed in the decisions and the choices that he made.
He decided instead that the reproaches were greater riches. Now, the reproaches were not the riches in themselves. Understand this. When he says the reproaches of Christ are greater riches, the reward is not the reproach. The reproach is what we endure looking to the reward. But the reproach is not the reward. The reward can be seen with the eye of faith. First Peter 4:14 says, “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” You see, the reward that we look to can only be seen with the eye of faith because it believes that those who have embraced God's truth and embraced the reproach of faith will receive the reward that comes to those who are faithful. And Moses did this looking to the reward.
Now, again, it's not the reproach that is the treasure, but the reward. Look at the end of Hebrews 11:26: “He was looking to the reward.” Now, this explains everything from the beginning of verse 24. Moses did what he did, he chose what he chose, he put himself in with the people of God, shunned royalty, accepted slavery, shunned Egypt, accepted Israel, scorned the treasures of Egypt, and embraced the reproaches for one central reason. The end of verse 26—he was looking for the reward. He had his eyes fixed on the reward.
Now, what is that reward? It's a good question, isn't it? What's the reward? You say, “Well, I think it's Heaven.” I think it is Heaven too. I think that's part of it. I don't think that that's all of it. If it were all of it, if the only reward were Heaven, then the author would have said, “He was looking for Heaven.” They had a Greek word for Heaven back then. The author could have said that. But the author doesn't say that. He just talks about the reward.
In fact, you'll notice that the reward is not specified as to exactly what it is. I think that that is intentional because I think that by that the author means every good thing that comes to the faithful is included in that reward, every good thing. So that means Heaven. That means the promised land, dwelling in it, the righteous dwelling in it with that heavenly city. It means justification by faith. It means the forgiveness of our sins. It is our adoption into His family. It is reigning and ruling with the Messiah in His millennial kingdom and for all of eternity in His ever-expanding new heavens and New Earth. It is the rewards for our service. It is an everlasting and eternal life. It is an everlasting and eternal resurrected body. It is the riches and glories of the new creation and all that that poses for the people of God and all that promises for the people of God. Every good thing that comes to those who are faithful is included in that reward.
Now, that makes the treasures of Egypt and all the treasures of this world pale by comparison if you understand what God has promised to us in the new creation. In fact, Moses would put the treasures of Egypt on the scale and the reproaches of Christ on the scale, and if you just measure those, the treasures of Egypt, they're heavy, they're weighty. Who wants reproach over treasure? Nobody would choose that. But when Moses looks to the reward, all of a sudden the scales are completely out of balance but in the opposite direction. Why? Because all of the reward that we're talking about, everything promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, everything promised to us in Christ in the new creation with resurrected bodies, the rewards for our service, life together, fellowship together in a place where there is no sin, there is no death, there is no dying, there's no disease, there's no mourning, all of that makes the treasures of Egypt pale by comparison.
Paul could say in Romans 8:18, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Therefore, the reproaches of Christ are not worthy to be compared to the reward that comes to those who are faithful. Do you see why the author is encouraging them to fix their eyes and their hope and their focus on that reward?
Sorry, I'm not crying, I'm coughing. I’m going to take a sip before I quote Spurgeon. Normally, I would take the sip after I quote Spurgeon to give you a chance to contemplate what Spurgeon said. But here's Spurgeon:
[Moses] said thus within himself, “I must renounce much and reckon to lose rank, position and treasure; but I expect to be a gainer, nevertheless, for there will be a day when God shall judge the sons of men. I expect a judgment throne with its impartial balances and I expect that those who serve God faithfully shall then turn out to have been the wise men and the right men, while those who truckled and bowed down to gain a present ease shall find that they missed eternity while they were snatching after time and that they bartered Heaven for a paltry mess of pottage.”
That's a good point to take a sip. Bartered Heaven for a paltry mess of pottage. Most of those who are alive in our day right now are bartering away Heaven for a paltry mess of pottage.
Spurgeon said we are to set our eyes upon the reward that is to come. Now, I understand that there is something inside of us as Christians that wrestles with this idea of fixing our hope on rewards. And I've had this conversation with a couple of folks in the congregation in recent months as we've been working our way through Hebrews 11. And the wrestling that we have is this: given all that God has done for me in Christ, is that not enough for me to serve Him? And shouldn't all of my service and my sacrifice and my mortification of my flesh and my giving and all the good deeds that I do, shouldn't it just be motivated out of love and nothing but love for the Lord? And if I do something for a reward, isn't that a polluting of my motive? Do you see the struggle that we have? Is that an illegitimate motive?
I would suggest to you that if doing something for the reward or keeping your eyes fixed on the reward is an illegitimate motive, then Scripture would not hold that out to us as a legitimate motive. Does that make sense? Why did Moses do what he did? Because he loved pain? No. Did Moses do what he did because he was just altruistic and he thought, “If I just give up everything and get nothing in response to this, I'll just do this out of love”? It's not to say that love and thankfulness and gratitude toward God and being overwhelmed by His grace to us, that those are not in the mix. But it is to say that we can't just exclude rewards as if it is some illegitimate aspect of why it is that God has called us to do what it is that He has called us to do.
Moses did everything that he did looking forward to the reward. And because he was looking forward to the reward, he was in no sense looking forward to something illegitimate. Both the reward of the righteous and the retribution upon the unrighteous are both held out to us in Scripture as legitimate motives for encouragement and enthusiastic and industrious labor for the Lord. Paul says to the Thessalonians who were suffering under the affliction of evildoers—he held out the destruction that would come upon those who will not obey the Lord Jesus Christ, and he reminded them, “Don't worry, God's enemies will be destroyed in flaming fire. He's going to deal out retribution to His enemies.” That is held out as an encouragement to the church.
So you and I can be motivated and encouraged by both of these things, by the anticipation of the reward that the righteous receive, as well as the anticipation of the retribution that will come to those who heap their reproach upon the righteous. Both of those are legitimate motives and legitimate causes of encouragement. And it is a legitimate motive to look forward to the reward when we understand this—and I hope that this will help clear up the conflict that we feel in our hearts when we understand this—that the reward that God gives to the faithful is Himself. In the gospel, God gives us Himself. He's the prize of the gospel. Heaven is not Heaven without Him.
And so everything that we enjoy in Heaven, every reward, every blessing, all of it is intended to turn us back to Him, to draw us to Him and allow us to experience Him in ever deepening and ever increasing degrees of glory and joy. So what God aims to give us is not just rewards apart from Him. There, go enjoy those things. But God aims to give us, through the rewards, Himself.
So if God Himself is the reward and my reward is just a means by which I enjoy God more, then when I do something for the reward, I'm doing it for what? For Him. If He's my reward, and I'm doing it looking forward to the reward, and what I get in the reward is Him, then He really is the focus of why I'm doing what I'm doing since He's the reward that He gives to me. Does that make sense? I hope that kind of clears up the conundrum because it is something of a conundrum in our hearts until we realize that the reward we receive is nothing more and nothing less than God Himself. And therefore that is a perfectly legitimate and God-centered motivation for doing everything that we do when the reward is Him.
Look, if you were to take all of this world's treasures, take the wealth of Elon Musk and add Jeff Bezos and add Jack Dorsey and add Apple and Microsoft and Bill Gates and Charles Schwab and all of the other people into that mix, all of their wealth, you put it all together—that's not all the wealth of the world, by the way, because that doesn't include our wealth, right? Take all their wealth. It's almost an unimaginable amount of wealth. But listen, if you were to take it and multiply it by ten, multiply it by a hundred, in multiplying all of those riches, you do nothing to change the nature of those riches. The nature of those riches is that they are fleeting and passing and destined to perish. It doesn't matter how many times you multiply, it’s still the same thing, just a passing treasure.
Moses’s choice of reproaches with eternal reward means that his choice to leave Egypt for Israel and to leave royalty for slavery and to embrace reproach instead of treasure, that choice ends up becoming the most rational, clear thinking, wise, and logical choice that anybody could possibly make. We can't even say that Moses’s choice was a sacrifice, can we? It wasn't a sacrifice. In fact, Moses did something that was in his own self-interest in the best possible way. If Moses got nothing for it, that would have been a sacrifice. In fact, that would have been foolish. But he is acting in his own self-interest in that he is giving up something that is passing and useless and perishing and will profit him nothing on the day of judgment and he is receiving instead something that is lasting and eternal and will profit him much on the day of judgment.
And so he's not doing anything that's irrational at all because faith is not irrational. In fact, you'd have to be a fool to pass up what Moses chose. You'd have to be a fool to take the treasures of Egypt. You'd have to be a fool to take all the people's wealth that I've mentioned just a few moments ago, multiply it by a thousand, to take that over Christ. You would be a fool. But Moses’s choice then becomes the most rational and reasonable choice that one could make.
To quote that passage from Spurgeon that I read earlier,
I expect that those who serve God faithfully shall then turn out to have been the wise men and the right men, while those who truckled and bowed down to gain a present ease shall find that they missed eternity while they were snatching after time and that they bartered Heaven for a paltry mess of pottage.
It's only the eye of faith that can see that, to see what nobody else can see and to treat it as substance and to be convinced of it and to base your life upon it. In fact, without that perspective, nobody would make the trade of reproach for treasure. Nobody would do that without that perspective. But to have that perspective, everybody who has that perspective would make that trade. It becomes the most reasonable thing to do.
Imagine that I were to offer you your choice of one of these two things. You can't have both of these, but you can have one of these two things. You can have a hundred dollars now or ten million dollars a year from now. Which one of those would you choose? Given the current rate of inflation, you might be better off to take the hundred dollars now. But let's assume that we weren't being governed by all of the escapees from Arkham Asylum for a moment and we lived in a rational world. Which would you choose? If you say, “Well, I'd pass on the hundred dollars now. I would take the ten million dollars a year from now,” yeah, that's the most reasonable choice, isn’t it? Would we call you sacrificial for making such a trade? No, you'd be acting in your own best self-interest. And you would be doing what every rational and reasonable person would do. You would gladly take the greater later than the lesser in the immediate.
This is what Moses did. He passed on a hundred dollars now, all the treasures of Egypt, so that he can have untold blessing and benefits and glories in the age that is to come. And he was simply passing on that which is passing to embrace that which is everlasting. And that is a reasonable thing.
J. C. Ryle said this:
Marvel not that he refused greatness, riches, and pleasure. He looked far forward. He saw with the eye of faith kingdoms crumbling into dust, riches making to themselves wings and fleeing away, pleasures leading on to death and judgment, and only Christ and his little flock enduring forever. . . .
He saw with the eye of faith affliction lasting but for a moment, reproach rolled away, and ending in everlasting honor, and the despised people of God reigning as kings with Christ in glory.
That's what the eye of faith sees.