Point Community Church
The teaching of Point Community Church in Austin, TX.
Point Community Church
Heroes: Moses the Leader Hebrews 11:23-29
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Well, let's jump in and look at what we're going to talk about today. What I want for us to do is to take a reality check here this morning. I want for us to think about the reality that we don't live in a world that's perfect. In fact, we live in a world that's really messed up and in need of help. And all of us, I think, naturally get that. You don't have to, you don't have to really be taught the fact that we need help and that we need rescue and that we need heroes. You don't, if you don't really believe me on that, maybe you should uh come and watch some of the programming that my kids watch every morning on PBS, right? So we have PBS on it on in our house uh from time to time, and one of the shows, obviously that's on PBS, is Sesame Street, right? Everybody know what Sesame Street is? Yes, I assume everybody knows what Sesame Street is. So Sesame Street is this interesting show. It actually, I grew up in Australia with Sesame Street. That's how worldwide it is, okay? But Sesame Street's changed a lot since I was a kid. When I was a kid, you know, there was lots of different characters. It seems now, I don't know if anybody any of you feel the same way, but Sesame Street's become very Elmo centric. Would anybody agree with that statement? It seems to be all centered around Elmo, and so much so that when it gets to the end of the show, they've typically got this thing called Elmo the Musical. And the problem is they only have several of these musicals that they have, and so they do the same ones over and over and over again, and then the songs get stuck in your head, and you find yourself singing them in the middle of your day, which is kind of crazy and sad all at the same time for me as an adult. So, anyway, it's become very Elmo centric, and there's one particular episode of Elmo the Musical that's kind of stuck in my head right now, and it's this one where he's this fix-it man, he's this handyman who goes around fixing things, he's got a hammer and a screw and he this screwdriver, and he goes around trying to fix everything, and as he's out and about doing that, he sings this little song. He's going around fixing everything that's broken, and he says, it sounds a little bit like this. He says, Elmo can make it right again, can make it whole again. And as I hear that song, it kind of gets stuck in my head, and I got to thinking, that's kind of messed up. Like, there's only one person who can make it whole again and make it right again, and as a Christian, I believe that that's Jesus. It's not Elmo, right? And yet here Elmo's making this like claim, I've got it all figured out. And the kids love it, they eat it up because all of us are looking for heroes. We know that there's something messed up. We know that the world needs help, and that's why we look to heroes. And that's exactly why we're looking at this series, actually, this these few months of the summer. We're looking at this series called Heroes because we want to ask the question of who are the heroes of the faith that not only have done incredible things by God's hand, but also point us towards the greater miracle, the greater hero of Jesus. And so I think it's been a really interesting series so far to really look at, because oftentimes we look at the stories of Noah or Abraham or even Joseph, who we looked at last week. We look at these stories and we look at them in isolation. We don't look at them in context of the greater story of the Bible, of the scriptures. And so what we're really attempting to do here is say, as we look at a whole, how are we pointing to Jesus through these heroes? Well, today we come to a very interesting character and a very significant character named Moses. I don't know what your perception or understanding of Moses is, but he's a very significant guy. If you're a part of either uh the Christian faith, the Jewish faith, or even you uh believe if you're a Muslim, if you ascribe to Islam, Moses is a significant figure to you because he played a big part in what we know and believe in each of those world religions. So he's a significant character, much like Abraham we talked about a few weeks ago. He's seen as a patriarch, a father of the faith. And the thing is, when you come to Moses' life, there is so much good stuff that could be said. There's a ton of symbolism, there's a ton of things that God did through him, a lot of things that God spoke through him. In fact, if I was to, um, I don't want to overwhelm you too much, but if I was to show you, if we went to Exodus 1, that's kind of where we start with the story of Moses, and then if we went all the way through to Deuteronomy chapter 34, 137 chapters later, that's where Moses kind of ends, okay? So there's 137 chapters of good stuff. That's not even all the extra stuff in the New Testament and all that other stuff in the Psalms, too, that we could talk about with Moses. And so as I look at it and as I was thinking about it this week, I was like, man, that's kind of like all this good stuff, it's kind of like coming to a really good buffet. Now, some of you are just lost because you're like, that's an oxymoron, Holly. There's no such thing as a good buffet. But think about it with me. It's kind of like this. You come to uh a place where, picture with me, they've got all your favorite foods in as much quantity as you want. And when you come to it, you're like, okay, where do I start? How do I pick and choose what to use here today? And so as we come to Moses here this morning, I've kind of felt the same as I'm preparing. I'm like, 137 chapters, really good stuff. Where do we go? So I ended up coming back rather than trying to get too overwhelmed by all of the good st good stuff, excuse me. I've I've come back to really honing in on Hebrews 11 and saying, okay, what does Hebrews 11 tell us about Moses' life? Because that's where we've really based this whole series, is out of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. Because this Hebrews 11 passage is all about the heroes of faith. And we've used that as our basis. Now, the problem with Moses is we all probably have at least a little bit of understanding about him. Now, depending on your background, some of you may know all the stories of Moses, all the things that happened in his life, and that's great. But I don't want to make the assumption that we're all on the same page here today. And I want to some of you it may be like, well, I've watched The Prince of Egypt and I know a little bit about his life, or you may think, you know, he's the guy who helped cross the Red Sea. Or even maybe some of you have watched the recent movie that was put out, Exodus, that was made, uh, by Ridley Scott, a very talented director who made a movie about Moses. The interesting thing is I did some research on that particular movie recently and found that that guy, Ridley Scott, is very anti-religion. He's very anti-God. And so to watch a movie that's written by a guy who's anti-God is kind of an interesting way to get informed on who Moses is. Another thing I found out as I was reading is that Christian Bale, the guy, very talented actor, the guy who acted Moses, said this about Moses. I think that the man was likely schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I've ever read about in my life. That was his view of Moses as he went and portrayed Moses, okay? So I don't agree at all with Christian Bale's view, but I just want to caution you guys when you're informed by the world on who Moses is, you've got to kind of be a little bit careful about what it shows you. I want to give you, actually, this is a random tidbit, but I want to give you a website to write down. If you're taking notes, write down this website, pluggedin.com. It's a great website I've been using for the last several years. It gives you reviews on all of the stuff in secular culture and it'll break down the positive and the negative elements from a Christian standpoint and view. Really great website. It's really not over the top, it's it's very well done. Um, but pluggedin.com, and that's where I went to get this information about the movie Exodus. It was one of those ones like Noah, where it's like, if I go and watch that, I'm probably gonna get angry about all the inconsistencies with scripture. So anyway, I went there and read these facts, and I was very interested to find that these guys who portray Moses and portray this story are anti-God and anti-Moses. And that's not at all how I feel about Moses. As I've studied this week and looked in his life, I've been reminded how humble and how patient this guy was, how powerfully God used him because of his humility, how powerfully God used him because he listened and obeyed. And so I really want to encourage you that Moses is a good guy, and when we come to his life, we have a lot that we can learn. So as you guys grab a Bible and are turning to Hebrews 11 with me this morning, I want to give you a little bit of background on his story. Uh, Moses' life can be divided into three sections. You've got the first 40 years of Moses' life, and the first 40 years of his life, he was Egyptian royalty. We'll talk about that in a moment, but he was adopted into an Egyptian family and lived as Egyptian royalty. The next 40 years of his life, he lived as a shepherd, a no-name shepherd in the land of Midian, which again is the wilderness, okay? So that's like the middle of nowhere. And then the last 40 years of his life, he was used powerfully by God to lead God's people. Okay? So thankfully God made it very easy to look at Moses' life because we've got these three 40-year chunks, which is kind of interesting. So think of that as we read this, because what we're gonna do is we're gonna read Hebrews 11, which again is the whole of faith, and as we read through it, we're gonna look at four different perspectives or angles that it gives us on Moses' life. Again, these are just four tidbits, four little sections of Moses' life. There's hundreds of sections that we could talk about today, but we're gonna focus in on these four. So let's read from verse 23 of Hebrews 11. Here we go. By faith, after Moses was born, he was hidden by his parents for three months because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they didn't fear the king's edict. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than enjoy the short-lived pleasures of sin. For he considered the reproach because of the Messiah to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since his attention was on the reward. 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. By faith he instituted the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn mu for uh excuse me, firstborn might not touch the Israelites. By faith they crossed the Red Sea as though they were on dry land. When the Egyptians attempted to do this, they were drowned. Now, for some of you like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm tracking with this. You know a little bit of the story of Moses. For some of you, like, what in the world was half of that about? Well, don't worry, we're going to explain it as we kind of dissect this this morning. But let's look at these four different angles, these four different stories of faith from Moses' life. And as we do that, my hope is that you and I will be encouraged and inspired and informed about how we too can live lives of faith like Moses. First thing focuses on the birth of Moses. I don't know if you picked that up on verse 23, but it tells us a little bit about Moses' parents. Now let me give you a little bit of backstory here. So it says by faith that they hid Moses away from the king and they didn't fear his edict. So Moses was born a couple of hundred years after Joseph, who we finished up talking about last week, okay? Joseph was second in command. He was an Israel, an Israeli guy who was second in command of Egypt. He was a very important guy, but a few hundred years later on, they'd forgotten who all these Israelite people were and why they were in their country. And so they're like, hey, these guys should be our slaves. So they're forced into slavery. And at this time, not only that, Pharaoh gets really freaked out by the fact that these Israelite people are having lots and lots of kids. And God's really blessing them with many, many children. And so what he decides to do is he makes this decree that any male born to the Israelites is to be killed. And that's the time in which Moses enters the scene. Moses should have been killed by Pharaoh. But Pharaoh, uh sorry, Moses' parents decide to go against what the king said. They decided to fear God more than they feared man. And the first thing that I want you to note there this morning is trusting in God is more important than fearing man. Moses' parents trusted God more than they feared Pharaoh because they realized the value of life. They realized that humans are created in God's image. I was thinking about this story and why this is in here in Hebrews 11. And it got me to thinking about this very interesting story I heard a few years ago. There was a couple, there was a family actually that moved in the 80s from the US to the Philippines to become missionaries. And they're there in the in the uh Philippines, they've got four kids, and the mother gets incredibly sick, like sick to the point that she's in a coma. And so they're trying to fight the infection that's in her system with all these really, really um powerful drugs that they're pumping into her body. And so they start to work, she comes out of the coma, and at that point they realize that she's pregnant with their fifth kid. And the the doctors come to her and they're like, hey, you've got to abort this baby because either this it will kill you because of all the drugs that we've had and how it's messed up the pregnancy, or the baby's gonna be very severely handicapped. You need to abort this baby. And they're really, you know, thrown off by this, they're they're worried about this. So they go and seek the best doctor that they can in Manila, in the capital of the Philippines, and he tells them point blank, if you he looks at her in the face and says, If you do not abort this baby, you will die. That's what she's told. And so they pray about what's going on, they pray about what they're meant to do about it, and they really feel that God's calling them to keep the baby and just trust in it, God for a miracle. And they end up keeping the baby, and uh she thankfully is able to give birth to the baby, and and there a few months later, Mr. and Mrs. Tebow give birth to their son Tim. And I don't know if you guys know that story about Tim Tebow, but that's how he entered into the world. He isn't meant to be here. I mean, the doctors told his parents to abort him. And the reality is that he is living, walking, breathing, amazing athlete, an amazing, you know, person who stood up for God. If you guys don't know who he is, he's a famous football player. I assume most of you in the room know who he is. But he's gone on to do amazing things for God because his parents had faith in God in that moment of hardship. And much in the same way, Moses' parents were in a moment of hardship, and they had faith that God was able to protect and bless their son, and so they chose to go against the king's edict and to follow God. Imagine what the world would be like if Moses' parents had just given in to what the king's edict was. Moses wouldn't have ever existed, but God was able to powerfully use Moses because he stood on the parents, the shoulders of his parents' faith, and that's a very important thing. Second perspective that we're given here in the book of Hebrews, and this is the one that the book of Hebrews spends the most time on, verse 24 through 27, tells us about Moses' rejection of Egypt. The reason that the writer of Hebrews stays on this for so long and uses all these verses to talk about the rejection of Egypt, is because it was a big deal. I think oftentimes we hear the story of Moses and we're like, oh yeah, he went back to be an Israelite, cool, and then he let God's people. No, you've got to understand the Israelites were slaves. They were the lowest of the low, and Egyptian royalty was the highest of the high. You couldn't get it any better in that day and age. That was the best way to live, was as royalty in one of the biggest kingdoms of the in the world at that time, the Egyptians. And so Moses makes this decision to follow God, and that means leaving Egyptian royalty to go and to be associated with these slaves. It's a really, really big deal. It would have been a very tough decision for him to make. If you read about it in Hebrews 11 from the message paraphrase written by Eugene Peterson, it says it like this By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. Listen to this sentence. He chose a hard life with God's people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. Isn't that well put? I like how that's put. Rather than choosing an opportunistic soft life with sin of sin with the oppressors. And really what I want you to see here as we look at this second angle into of faith into Moses' life is the invisible and eternal is more valuable than the sorry, the invisible and the eternal is more valuable than the visible and the temporary. Moses had an eternal perspective. He was able to see further down the line and say, you know what, all this comfort, all this luxury that I'm living in here in Egypt Isn't to be counted. What needs to be counted is me following God. Is me following his plan and his purpose for my life. I find verse 26 particularly interesting. Let's look back at that. It says this for he considered the reproach because of the Messiah to be greater than the wealth, greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. There's two interesting things there. The word reproach, I think, is very interesting. He said he considered the reproach. We often don't think of it like this. Moses spent those first 40 years of his life as an Egyptian. Picture with me, you spend 40 years somewhere, you're going to have a lot of friends and family that are associated with that life. He chose to reject, to pick up the reproach of all of those people by moving in a very scandalous way to be and back with his people, the Israelites. And you've got to realize the significance of that. That wasn't some small task that he just took on. People would have talked about him. They would have been like, Did you hear about Moses? There would have been dinner conversations. Did you hear that he went to be with the slaves? Did you hear what happened about Moses? So we've got to understand that this was a big deal for him to reject Egypt, just like it's a big deal for us to sometimes reject the temporary and live for the eternal. That means people are going to look down on us and we're going to be viewed with reproach. But that's okay because the invisible is more worthwhile when it's in God's economy than the visible, right? The other interesting thing there in verse 26 it says, For he considered the reproach because of the Messiah to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. The Messiah? How is the Messiah in here in this story about Moses? The Messiah didn't exist yet. When you hear that word Messiah, that means Christ. That means Jesus. Moses lived hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus was ever on the scene. So what's it really talking about here? Well, what it's talking about is Moses had enough foresight and faith to know and enough clarity from God to know that what he was doing was stepping out in faith, believing in a greater person that was coming, in Jesus. And that's an amazing step of faith for him to do that. And much in the same way, we are called to step out in faith and to follow God. And I really want you guys to see that. A lot more could be said about this eternal perspective thing. We've talked about it with some of the other heroes. I'm going to move on this morning for the sake of time, but really want you guys to see that with all of these heroes that we're talking about, all of them had an eternal perspective where they were looking to the future, where they were looking to eternity rather than temporary pleasure. Let's go on to the third perspective. This is an interesting one, too. The third perspective is the Passover story. Now, this is probably the part for those of you who aren't really familiar with the story of Moses where you were like, what in the world is the Bible talking about here? Because it's the part that talks about the sprinkling of the blood and the angel of death. Remember that part in the passage we read? That kind of sounds really weird to you if you're not, you know, if you're not familiar with the story. So I want to give you a little bit of background here. Moses spends the first 40 years of his life, like I said, as Egyptian royalty. He rejects that, tries to lease lead God's people. They tell him they kind of reject him and he runs away because he kills an Egyptian. Ends up as a shepherd for 40 years in the wilderness in Midian. He has a family, and God meets him after that next 40 years and says, Hey, I want you to go back and I want you to lead my people. And so it's a really incredible encounter that he has there with this burning bush, right? He heads back to Egypt, and as he comes back to Egypt, he goes before Pharaoh, who he probably knew quite well, and says to him, Hey, God's told me that you need to let his people go. And Pharaoh's like, What? I I don't know you, God, and what are you doing here? Basically, he says, You guys have been dreaming up too much. I'm gonna make these slaves work even harder. And so God sends this plague against Pharaoh, and uh Pharaoh says, Hey, Moses, can you make this plague stop? And Moses' like, yeah, if you let our people go. Pharaoh says, Yeah, okay, and then there's this back and forth that happens because what Pharaoh does is he changes his mind. So for the next nine plagues, there's this back and forth drama, right? Finally, with the tenth plague, uh, God tells Moses, hey, this is it, this is gonna be the last plague. And so there's this back and forth. Pharaoh says, No, I'm not gonna let you go. And so Moses pulls all the Israelite people together, and it's a really interesting story for you to read. But Moses pulls these Israelite people together and he says, Hey, something's gonna happen. Uh, this is gonna be it, the last plague. The aim the angel of death is gonna come over the land and kill all the firstborn sons in the land. And what you need to do is we're gonna get together as families, you're gonna get dressed, ready to leave. Uh, we're gonna get together as families. As a family unit, you're gonna find a lamb, an innocent, spotless lamb. You're gonna take it, you're gonna kill it together, and you're gonna take the blood from that lamb and wipe it over, sprinkle it over the doorpost of your home where you guys sleep. Now, I don't know about you, but that if I was there in that time, I would have been, This sounds really crazy, but I guess I'll trust and believe that Moses knows what he's doing. So, anyway, they all go ahead and do this, and that night. It's a really serious and somber story. That night, this angel of death comes over the land, and as it sees these Israelite homes, it sees the blood sprinkled on them and passes over. That's where the word comes from. Passes over those homes and goes on to the next house. And as it comes to the Egyptian house houses, these firstborn sons are taken, their lives are taken away, and there's great weeping in the land. Pharaoh says, Hey, you guys just go. This is over. You guys go and worship God like you want to. And so that's kind of a very significant moment in the story. But the story's kind of interesting, like it's it's like, what's this story about? Well, it's about symbolism and it's about Jesus. Here we are in the second book of the Bible, and we're being pointed directly to Jesus again. Remember that innocent lamb there that's been sacrificed. Think about that. That's a symbol of Jesus. Jesus was the innocent Son of God who came and substituted into our place. So that when we have, and I know this sounds weird, but stick with me, when we have Jesus' blood on the doorposts of our heart, when death comes to us, he will pass over us because he will see Jesus' blood and not the debt of sin that we we owe that we deserve to pay. It's really significant for you to see that. Here in Exodus, we're pointed directly to Jesus. Our need for Jesus, the need for us to die in our place. You guys tracking with me this morning? So I really want to encourage you. This is amazing. Here we are in Exodus reading directly about the gospel, about the good news of Jesus. The third story, oh, I didn't give you the fill in the blank, sorry. We are shown here the importance of the blood of Jesus. That's your fill in the blank if you are following along there this morning. We're shown here the importance of the blood of Jesus. The fourth and final thing that we're shown in the book of Hebrews about Moses' life is about the crossing of the Red Sea. This again is an interesting story. Now, some of you probably know a little bit about this. Some of you may have seen Bruce Almighty where he parts his tomato soup or whatever it is in the restaurant there, you know. That doesn't really give do the story justice. This is an amazing story of God working an incredible miracle. So what happens is the people of Israel leave. They head out into the wilderness, they kind of weave around a little bit, they end up in what is essentially a valley, and the oceans here on one side, the open land out intowards Egypt is on the other, and they see this cloud of dust coming towards them. They realize it's Pharaoh and the Egyptian army and chariots coming to take them back to Egypt. Pharaoh, surprise, surprise, has changed his mind again. And so he's coming to get his slaves back, and the people totally freak out on Moses for the first time. What they do is they're like Moses, where they're not enough graves in Egypt for all of us, and there's this moaning back and forth. But what ends up happening is they end up uh they end up freaking out, and Moses is like, hey, stressless, wait and see. That's not exactly what he says, but he says, wait and see what God does. You're gonna see God act on your behalf today. And so what God tells Moses to do is to raise his stuff. He raises his stuff, and the ocean literally parts into. Now I know uh we've probably watched enough TV and stuff that most of us are like, yeah, yeah, that's kind of cool. But think about that. Think about an ocean that you've been to. I know we're here in central Texas, but think about an ocean. Imagine just seeing that part, like literally wall up on both sides. God's doing an incredible supernatural miracle in this moment. Not only that, when it does open up and there's a path for them to walk through, they don't walk through on the sloppy sand on the bottom of the ocean. It says both here in Hebrews and back in uh Exodus, where the story is written, that they walk through on dry ground. It's a miracle. There's no other way to explain it, right? So they walk through uh the ocean, they come out the other side, Pharaoh's army tries to come down in and follow them, and the waters crash in over and destroy their army. And something incredible happens in this moment. What happens is they move from unbelief to belief. They move from being slaves to being free people. There's this moment of salvation that finally happens. They finally get it. You would have thought they would have got it with all the other like plagues and miracles they'd seen Moses do, but they they were kind of like, yeah, I don't know about this. But in this moment we know that they finally believe, they finally believe that this Yahweh is real and that he wants them to be his people. Let me read for you what happens in Exodus 14, 31. It says this When Israel, that's the people of Israel, saw the great power of the Lord used against the Egyptians, the people, listen to this, feared the Lord and believed in him and in his servant Moses. We're reminded here in this story of the significance of the miracle of belief. There's a moment here where they finally get it. They finally understand. They're finally not slaves anymore, they're free people. And again, there's symbolism all through this as we in our lives go through this moment and this decision where we finally believe in God. It's a moment of a miracle. And much in the same way, I don't know if you guys have ever seen a baptism, but when you baptize someone, often the thing that we say is you're buried with Christ in baptism, raised to walk in a new life. It's like when they went through the sea, they were baptized. They went from being slaves to being new and free people. Again, there's a lot of symbolism tied into all of this story. Now, some of you are like, okay, I get this symbolism thing, I get that he's pointing us towards Christ. What are the parallels? What are the things that really stand out in this story that line up between Moses and Jesus? I want to just quickly list out a few things for you. Moses suffered just as Christ also suffered. He rejected comfort to serve and to lead and became like the people that he led. Christ in the same way also rejected the comfort of heaven, that's nicer than Egypt, to serve and to save. He became like the people that he came to lead. He became a man. Both of them are born, were born into nations that were under foreign rule. As you look at Jesus' life, he was born into what was dominated by the world then was the Roman Empire. You look at Moses' life, obviously the Egyptians. Both of them had rulers that tried to kill them at birth. We already talked about Pharaoh trying to kill the babies. If you look at the nativity story, the story of Jesus being born, you see also that Herod tried to kill all the babies because he'd heard about a prophesied Messiah. Moses had a time in the wilderness before really taking on his calling. So did Jesus. Jesus had a time of 40 days in the wilderness before he started his public ministry. Both did miracles, obviously. Both fed the people that they led. We didn't really uh get into all of those stories about how Moses was used by God to feed the people, but both of them did that. Both of them, Moses leads the people through the waters. We talked about this, and Christ leads us through the waters of baptism. But here's what you really need to hear. Moses rescued his people from oppression and slavery. Christ rescues us from the slavery of sin. That's the point of it, right? Moses was just a foreshadow of the greater Jesus that was coming. And some of you in the room may be asking, well, if Moses was so amazing, why why didn't the why didn't we kind of end with him? Why did we need something somebody greater? Well, I want to talk about why how we know that Moses was just a foreshadow, but wasn't the actually the ultimate savior. Moses sinned. Jesus didn't sin. That's a big difference, right? Secondly, uh Hebrews argues, the book of Hebrews in chapter 3 argues that Jesus is the greater Moses. Another thing is Moses himself prophesied about Jesus. Isn't that interesting to think about? Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 15 says this. This is Moses speaking. Also, Moses, through God, gave the people the law. And when he did that, he gave them the Ten Commandments. You guys know the story of Moses giving the Ten Commandments. That was like a weight on their shoulders. It helped them know and under f understand their sin. These ten rules and things was like this weight that came down on their shoulders and said, Hey, this is how you're meant to live before a holy God. And none of them could really live up. They, you know, they had to go through the animal sacrifice thing was started where they'd they'd kill a lamb and all of that sort of fun stuff. So that was all instituted through Moses. But what was instituted through God was God came to give us liberty, to give us freedom. The beautiful thing about Jesus is Jesus himself says, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. You guys need to realize that those Ten Commandments, you can never keep all of those. What you need is you need me to come and to keep them for you instead. So that when the angel of death comes to you, it will pass over you by seeing my blood rather than seeing your own guilt. Tracking? Okay, good. Uh so what's the point of this whole conversation today? What does God show us from Moses' story? Well, a couple of ways I want to look at this as we kind of wrap this up here this morning. The first thing is if you're not a Christ follower, if you wouldn't say, Yeah, I'm I'm a Christian, or if you're here kind of exploring faith, again, really awesome that you're here with us today. Really glad that you've come to join us and and to even engage in this spiritual conversation with us. But if that's who you are this morning, if you're not sure where you stand with Jesus today, I'd like to just put before you that Moses is important because he really shows us the importance of faith. He reminds us through his story that it's important to believe in God, to have that moment of salvation and how significant that is. And so my challenge, my thought for you this morning is this Know that God is real, know that he has a plan and purpose for your life. Have faith and believe in him to cover your sin. Romans 6 23 tells us this for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus. And so I know it sounds, I know we've had some interesting conversations about blood and covering us and all of that, but you've got to understand that there's something deeper to all of that that we're talking about, significant truth. And so my hope is if you're if you're not a Christ follower, that today you'd be inspired by Moses' life to to really consider the importance of following Jesus, the imp to consider the importance of having somebody's blood, having Jesus in your stead, so that when the angel of death, when death is at your door, that he will see Jesus' blood and not your own guilt. If you are a Christ follower today, I believe that Moses should inspire us to have faith. Moses was just a man like you and I. He had his problems, he had his issues. I mean, we've already talked about that, but our lives through God can be significant, and that is the key right there. Moses was significant because he listened to God, he followed God, and my challenge to each and every one of us here today is are we willing to take steps of faith to follow God radically like Moses did? Remember, he rejected the comfort of Egypt. He was willing to listen and obey and follow God. And so my challenge, my thought for each and every one of us who is a Christ follower today is are we willing to have that same tenacity to follow God wholeheartedly like Moses did, to listen to his voice, to listen to his calling, to have an eternal perspective like him. And really, for those of you who are Christ followers today, I really want to end with this thought. I want for you to think about the amazingness of what God has done for you. Part of the story that I left out earlier is that as those people go through that Red Sea and they walk through on dry ground, they come out the other side, they see their enemies, their captors, destroyed right in front of their eyes. They didn't have to do anything for it. It was all God. God did all of it. They come out the other side, they finally have this moment of belief. Yes, we believe in God, we believe Moses is the one called to lead us. But in that moment, what happens is if you read on in the story Exodus 14 on to 15, it tells us that the people just literally start celebrating right there on the edge of the sea. They start singing this song, they start celebrating who God is and what he's done for them. And really, more than anything, I think that as we look at Moses' life, as we end thinking about Moses' life here today, that we who are believers in Christ can celebrate, that we can walk out of here just knowing that God is good, that his grace has covered us, that when we're called to give an account for our lives, Jesus has got us covered. That is something that's worth celebrating. And so my encouragement to each and every one of us today is that we should be inspired to live lives of joy because of who God is and what he's done for us.