This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

[Music] Welcome to Hebrews 11, Day 4, verses 23 to 29 today. The stories of
faith just keep coming at us. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and now Moses.

Today we're going to look at how Moses can teach you and I to live a life of
faith. In these verses 23 to 29, you see four great questions that every man,
every woman of faith has to ask if we're going to live a life of faith. They're
the life questions.

I've always loved the way that Pastor Rick Warren looks at these four questions.
The identity question, the integrity question, the priority question, and then
the tenacity question. Those are issues of life that you have to settle.

And when you settle those issues of life, you're in a position to live a life of
faith that you never thought possible. And Moses teaches us how to do that.
First question is the identity question.

Verse 23 and 24 say, "By faith, Moses' parents hid him for three months after he
was born because they saw he was no ordinary child and they were not afraid of
the king's edict. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as
the son of Pharaoh's daughter. " Every one of us, if we want to live a life of
faith, you have to first ask the question, "Who am I?

" This was essential for Moses because he had this identity crisis very early
on. He was born Jewish, and then he was raised Egyptian in Pharaoh's palace. And
so as he grew up, he had to decide, "Who am I?

Really, who am I? " This was going to have a major consequence in his life. It
would affect the rest of his life.

Here was his choice. He could pretend that he was Pharaoh's grandson, and if he
accepted that, he'd have fame, he'd have fortune, he'd have this luxurious
lifestyle, he'd have this great career. On the other hand, he could admit his
Jewish roots, and if he did, he'd be disgraced, he'd be humiliated, he'd be
thrown out of the palace, he'd be forced into slave labor.

Now, if you were confronted for those two choices, which choice would you make?
Moses, when he came to this crisis moment in his life, he didn't hesitate. He
made the choice to admit who he was, to confirm the identity that God had given
him.

He refused to live a lie. He made the decision that affected the rest of his
life. By faith, Moses refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

The word "refuse" there in Greek, it means to reject, it means to disown, no
turning back. He slammed the door on living the way the world told him to live.
In order to live your identity, you have to reject the identity that other
people around you want you to take up.

You have to live the identity that God has given you to live. That's how you
live a life of faith. A lot of people struggle with living a life of faith
because they're trying to live somebody else's life of faith.

Many people struggle with living a life of faith because they're so caught up in
the values of the world around them that in the impressing people at work or
impressing people that are friends, that a life of faith is not possible. Yeah,
you got to know who you are. You got to know who you are.

In Christ, in Christ, you are a Christian. You are a follower of Jesus. That's
who you are.

That's your identity. Your identity now is in Christ. Second question you have
to answer to live a life of faith is the responsibility question.

That question is, "What will I do with my life? " Verse 26, "He chose to be
mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of
sin for a short time. " So in verse 24, we have Moses refusing and in verse 25,
26, we have him choosing.

You see the difference? First there's the negative and then there's the
positive. God always backs up a negative with a positive.

The Christian life isn't just a matter of don'ts. I'm not going to do this or
this or this. It's a matter of I'm choosing to do this.

He refuses but then he chooses. That's living a life of faith. What are you
going to do with your life?

God has chosen you for ministry. In John 15, Jesus says, "You've not chosen me.
I have chosen you that you should go and bear fruit.

" God chose you from the foundation of the world. He chose you to be saved. He
chose you to serve.

He chose you to be loved. But you, you and I, you must make the choice to first
choose God's will for your life, to listen to his call to salvation, and then to
live out that will and what he's given you to do. What am I going to do with my
life?

Verse 24 says, "When he had grown up, Moses made this decision. " At some point
in all of our lives, we have to grow up. Sometimes it's at 20, sometimes it's at
30, sometimes it's at 60, sometimes it's at 12.

One of the marks of maturity is when you begin to accept responsibility for your
own spiritual life, when you begin to grow in your own spiritual life. Moses
could be trained by his parents as a baby but there came a day when he had to be
responsible for his own spiritual life. One of the marks of maturity is when you
begin to realize God has put you into this world to bear fruit, not just to eat
fruit that other people have borne, but to bear fruit, to do something that
makes a difference in this world.

What am I going to do with my life? That's a question of faith. The third issue
you and I have to face is the priority question.

And that question is, what's really most important? If you're going to live a
life of faith, you've got to have a value system. We talked about that the first
day.

You've got to have a different kind of values, just like Abel did. You have to
clarify your values, your morals, your ethics, your priority. That's what Moses
did in this moment of crisis in his life.

He decided what was most important. In verse 26, he regarded disgrace for the
sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was
looking ahead to the reward. Now look at these words, regarded.

That means you make a moral choice. You make a value judgment and greater value.
He considered, he regarded something of greater value than something else.

To regard, it means to evaluate. He did this evaluation. He weighed things in
the balance.

He judged the value of the things he was looking at in life. This isn't
something he did quickly. It's not a snap judgment we're talking about here.

You're really thinking it through. You're seriously considering life. What's the
direction of my life?

What are going to be my values? What's the priorities of my life? If you were
asked by somebody, what are the values you're living your life on?

Could you name them? Moses rejected the world's values and he lived by God's
values. Now what's God's value system?

You can see it in Moses's choice. The system is God's purpose is more valuable
than popularity. As Pharaoh's grandson, he's heir to the throne.

He's got this position of popularity, but he didn't choose that. Don't ever sell
out your life for popularity because popularity doesn't last. In God's value
system, people are more valuable than pleasures.

Moses could have had all the pleasures in the world. He could have lived on Easy
Street. He had a royal lifestyle.

Any whim he wanted would be satisfied immediately, but in order to do right, he
had to choose discomfort over pleasure. And he did that. He did that for the
sake of people.

Along with God's people, he did this. The Bible says in verse 25, "to be
mistreated. " He did it for the sake of people.

People enabled him to say, "I will reject the pleasures of this world because
I'd rather love people. " What's God's value system? It's also that God's
promise is more valuable than our possessions.

Moses gave up the very things that most of the people in this world spend all
their life trying to get. What motivated him to do this? Verse 26 says he was
looking forward to his reward.

He was able to get his values right because he had the right perspective. Your
values are determined by your perspective. Your values are determined by your
vision.

And Moses was a man of perspective, of vision. He looked forward, just like
Abraham did. We looked at yesterday.

He looked forward through this life to the eternal of what God was doing. And
because of that, he was able to value God's promise above the possessions of
this life. Now there's a fourth question in Moses's life that you and I need to
answer if we're going to live by faith.

And that is what I would call the tenacity question. Verses 27 to 29, "By faith
he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw him
who was invisible.

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood so that the destroyer
of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith the people
passed through the Red Sea as on dry land. But when the Egyptians tried to do
so, they were drowned.

" The tenacity question is will I endure? Will I endure? You see, we're coming
against the same themes again and again as we go through these lessons of faith.

Will I not just go into the land but live in the land in the life of Abraham?
And for Moses, will I not just have that first step of faith, but will I endure
as we walk out of this land? He persevered, the Bible says.

I love this phrase, "because he saw him who is invisible. " He didn't take his
eyes off the goal because he didn't take his eyes off of God. That's why God
used him.

So he left Egypt. So he kept the Passover. So he passed through the Red Sea.

But for all of these things there was some waiting involved. There was some
waiting on God involved. And one of the questions behind tenacity is how long
can I wait?

How long can I wait to see the fulfillment of a vision that God has given for my
life, my family, my ministry? You see, you and I have to constantly keep the
Lord and his will before us because the secret of success is persistence. Faith,
success equals persistence.

The secret of persistence is faith vision. Keeping your eyes off the problem and
on the one who is invisible. Only those who see the invisible can do the
impossible.

Only those who see the invisible God can do the impossible things that he asked
us to do. Moses refused to give up no matter what happened. That's why God used
him.

God uses people who don't give up. And people who don't give up are people who
are looking at the one who's invisible. If you had to summarize Moses' ministry
in one word, it would be the word endurance.

Some of us, when it comes to faith, living this life of faith we've talked about
in these four questions, some of us get stuck in our own little world. How do
you break out to live this great life of faith that God wants you to live? You
realize that God is bigger.

God is bigger. You keep your eyes on the one who's invisible. Some of us are
stuck in our big world.

Lies filled with success and energy and fulfillment and busyness. How do you get
stuck there? You get stuck there because it's not big enough.

There's more to life than the 70, 80, 90 years that you spent on this planet.
There's more to life than you. Wouldn't it be a tragedy to end this life and
realize you'd become so stuck on the short term, you'd totally miss preparing
for the long term, investing in the long term?

Moses was a man who knew how to endure. He knew about both, getting stuck in a
little world and a big world. He was stuck for 40 years living in a big world as
a prince of Egypt.

And then if you know his story, the next 40 years of his life he was out in the
desert fearing God's plan for his life, stuck in a little world as a shepherd in
the desert. D. L.

Moody's famous line, "Moses spent 40 years thinking he was somebody. Then he
spent 40 years on the backside of a desert realizing he was a nobody. Finally he
spent the last 40 years of his life learning what God can do with a nobody.

" You see, he looked at the one that no one can see. He looked ahead to the
reward. And because of that, he was able to answer these four questions in a way
that enabled God to use him in an amazing way.

Let's pray together. Father, help me to learn. Just pray this with me, would
you?

Just, Lord, help me to learn just a measure, a thimble full of faith from this
man, Moses. Instead of being discouraged by the faith I don't have, help me to
be encouraged by the fact that Moses is a human being just like I am. With
struggles and difficulties, and yet he was able to step into faith because of
your word.

Thank you for your word in my life. Help me to live a life of faith today. Let
his life, Moses' life, be an encouragement to my faith today.

I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to see that where faith
gets you is not where faith will take you.