Faith Receives Grace

A year ago, I decided to get out of the business of baling square hay bales. This past week, I was reminded of just how wise I was to do that as I worked out in the blazing heat to plant dove fields. Aside from roofing, square baling is some of the hottest, hardest work you will ever do. When I’ve managed to trick people into helping me, they often asked, “Can we start early in the morning so we can be done before it gets hot?” The answer: no – because you have to wait for the dew to burn off. Hay baling can only start around 10 am. Over the 10 years I did it, I learned some tricks of the trade. It’s best to wear a thin, long-sleeved shirt to prevent sunburn and also catch the sweat and keep you cool. Don’t ask your teenage daughter to help the day before school starts (it ruins her look for the first day). And, drink plenty of water. On a hot summer day, with the sun beating down on you, there is nothing like a cool drink of water. When it’s like that, you don’t want Gatorade or coke, you want water. And, you don’t care how you get it – water hose, faucet, or bottle.

Grace is like a cool drink of water. It satisfies the soul. It comforts the weary. It delivers from death. Faith is like that water hose or bottle that delivers the water. But, more times than not, the way we talk about grace and faith can be misleading. Many times, we talk as though faith is the act that saves. Some might say, “my faith saved me.” Or, “I’m saved because I believed.” That would be like saying “that bottle quenched my thirst.” The bottle didn’t quench your thirst. The water did that. The bottle is the vessel through which you received the water. In a similar way, faith is the means by which we receive the grace of God, but it is God’s grace that saves us. Faith doesn’t save you – the grace of God through his son, Jesus Christ, saves you.

This morning, in our study of the Hall of Faith, we come to three instances in the story of Moses in which God’s grace delivered Moses through faith. To see that, let’s read Heb. 11:27-29 together. From this text I want you to see three points: Through faith, the grace of God gives confidence, covers, and conquers.

First, through faith, the grace of God gives us confidence in the face of persecution. In verse 27, the writer of Hebrews gives us the example of Moses as he faced down the Egyptian Pharoah. In Exodus 12 we find the story of the people of Israel finally leaving Egypt. The text tells us, in Exodus 12:1 that the Egyptians even begged them to go, fearing that they would all die if they didn’t. So, what changed from the prideful, oppressive Egyptians who enslaved the Hebrews and killed their infant boys? Well, something kind of big – God, through Moses and Aaron, sent ten plagues on the land of Egypt. He turned water to blood, infested the land with frogs, gnats, locusts, and boils. He destroyed their monuments with fire and hail from heaven. He turned their land to darkness. And worst of all, he killed all of their firstborn children in one night. These plagues turned the hearts of the Egyptians to water and moved them to let the Hebrews go. Not only did they let them go, but they gave them treasures as they left and some even left with them.

This is why the writer of Hebrews says that Moses left with confidence, not fearing the anger of the king. Moses knew that the hand of the invisible God was with them because he had seen God at work in his life until that point. He trusted that he could take a step towards Mount Sinai with all of Israel in tow because God had been with them and would be with them to the end. Brothers and sisters, we can do the same – we can have confidence in God’s grace, even as we face persecution and trial, because we have seen the invisible God at work in the past. We have seen him answer our prayers for healing. We have seen him give us strength to endure a season of despair. We have seen him protect us from storms, bring life through our children, mend relationships, and give us the words to say as we share the Gospel. In all these things and more, God has been faithful through his grace, and so we face the next day with confidence.

Second, through faith, grace covers us in God’s atoning work. In verse 28, the writer steps back to the event that occurred just before the exodus. Remember, nine different times, Moses went to the Pharoah to demand that he let his people go, and nine times, the Pharoah denied it. So, one last time, Moses goes with one terrible, final warning. He tells the Pharoah that there is one last plague coming, more horrible than all the rest, and after that, “you will let my people go.” In the tenth plague, God had promised that an angel of death would come in the night to take the life of every firstborn child in the land.  But, this plague was different than the rest. In all of the other plagues, the land of Goshen, where the Hebrews lived, was spared while the rest of Egypt suffered. When the water turned to blood, it was pure in Goshen. When darkness fell over all the land for three days, there was light for the Hebrews. But, with the tenth plague, the death angel would be indiscriminate. He would take the life of a Hebrew just as easily as that of an Egyptian. To save the people of Israel from this fate, God gave Moses a ritual, called Passover. On the day the death angel was to come, each Hebrew family was to take a pure, spotless lamb, kill it, drain its blood, and splatter that blood on the doorposts of their house. God promised that when the death angel saw the blood on the door, he would pass over. So, why is this the distinction that saved the Hebrews? Why didn’t God just tell the death angel to leave them alone? I believe there are two reasons. First, death is a universal plague because sin is a universal condition. Romans 3:23 tells us, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The Hebrews had suffered greatly in slavery to Egypt, and so one could say, well, they deserved the relief from bloody water and infestations and darkness. But, you could not say they deserved relief from death. The Hebrews deserved to die because they were sinners, just like the Egyptians, and the death angel would make no distinctions based on heritage.

But there is a second reason – the grace of God. Yes, the judgment of death is universal. Yes, every person deserves that punishment because of sin. And yet, God is gracious. Notice how he is gracious. He shows grace to the people of Israel by covering their sins with the blood of a spotless lamb. This Passover, which the Jews would observe from that first day in Egypt to now, pointed forward to an atoning sacrifice that would be given once for all sin. In John 1:29, John the Baptist looks up the hill to see Jesus passing by, points to him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” In the book of Revelation, Jesus is referred to as “the lamb who was slain”. The Passover’s pure, spotless lamb pointed to Jesus. The blood that covered the doorpost pointed to the blood of Jesus that would cover your sin. It is the grace of God that covers you in the atoning work of Christ, and you receive that grace through faith.

Finally, through faith, grace conquers our enemies. In verse 29, the writer points to a final event in the exodus. After the Hebrews left Egypt, the Pharoah had buyer’s remorse and decided to try again to assert his authority. He gathered his army and set out in hot pursuit of the fleeing Israelites. Trapped, with the Red Sea at their backs and the Egyptian army barreling down on them, God rained down a pillar of fire to halt the Egyptians. Then, he told Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea”, and at that, God sent a strong east wind and parted the sea so that the Israelites could cross on dry ground. The Egyptians foolishly pursued them into the parted waters only to be drowned when God let the waters go. In all of this, it’s interesting just how helpless the Israelites were. They had no fighting men, and their reaction, when facing the army of Egypt, was not to array into battle lines. They were defenseless, helpless. And, it is at this very time, that God acted to deliver them. This is the way God works. God revels in showing his greatness in our moment of weakness. 1 Cor. 1:27 says, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” It is not when you think you have the world in your palm that you can expect God to work, but when you are at wits end. God will not work through your greatness or strength, but through your weakness and need. This is when God reveals himself to be gracious and faithful.

Brothers and sisters, the grace of God gives us victory over our enemies – over sin, Satan, and death. The grace of God covers our sins so that we stand forgiven before him. So, may we walk in that grace, knowing that our neediness proves his graciousness.