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The Moses Standpoint
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone SDA Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2007-12-15 21:46Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2007-12-15 21:46Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-mosesst.php
There are many ideas out there today. Christianity has competition. Were it the only thing anyone ever thought about, we might get away a more theoretical belief system. This is not the case. Christianity competes, first, with a thousand different variations on what itself is. Beside that, it competes with a host of other options, many of which seem to provide immediate satisfaction. Instead of denying self, I can take Meth now and experience an intense pleasurable sensation now. How can we ourselves, and our young people, be successful Christians up against the lure of immediate pleasure?
Let’s look at it.
Competing Paradigms
First of all, realize that in the atheistic paradigm, there are no devils and no God or gods. It is just you and the world. There is little but experience in this outlook on life. One chooses between that which is pleasurable and that which is not, or is less so, or is valued differently.
In the Christian paradigm there is God and there are devils and there is more than experience for its own sake. Man stands in the middle of the contest. He is born onto a battlefield where ideas of morality are being contested. He is begotten into a living laboratory, born into the test-tube as it were. He is part of an experiment to see what works. This was not God’s ideal but Satan has forced the question. God knows that His grace is sufficient for fallen man; He proved that through Jesus. But the conflict is not ended yet.
We are not pawns; pawns cannot choose. We are the children of providence. It is not given us to choose many things about ourselves. When you came into this world, you did not choose your hair color, your level of intelligence, your physical appearance, your parents, or whether you would prefer apples to oranges. But you landed here and then there were many things to choose. While we are not able to choose certain things, we are able to choose others—the things that really make us us.
Pleasure or Sacrifice?
Now to this question of pleasure or sacrifice.
By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward (Hebrews 11:24-26).
Moses’ eye saw further than the moment. Surrounded by oppulance and dissipation, seeing the riches of the court of pharaoh up close, he was privy not only to the glitter but the goo. He saw not only the licentiousness but also the wreckage in human life. Some of today’s glitteratti (celebrities) not only enjoy their Hollywood parties, but are also seen doing inebriated things. They are seen going to prison, crashing their automobiles, some have their children removed, and some land in an early obituary column. Moses in his day saw similar things. Clearly, he was impressed; he was impressed that all that glitters is not gold, and that there were pleasures to be had. But only for a season. And the result? Creatures formed in the image of God reduced to the animal, reduced to experience, and to values that close eyes tight against the things of eternity.
Yes, Moses saw that the pleasures of sin were for a season. That tempered his choice.
Our children may not be in pharaoh’s court. But if we train them to, they can reason from cause to effect. They can make a choice like Moses. It can be that they will see that the reproach of Christ is greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, all fleeting as they are. It begins to come down to what we esteem, how we value things, what we love. Faith means not only trusting God but seeing with a longer eye. It means viewing things from the perspective of eternity and not just the moment.
Love or Love?
God had a test for Abraham.
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure (Hebrews 11:17-19).
How did Abraham find it in himself to offer up his only begotten son? Genesis 2:22 hints at how hard this must have been.
And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
This was not only Abraham’s pride and joy, the son of his love, but it would also be, and no reason given, the end of the promise of God. With no descendants, the promise of God would not be fulfilled to him. But Abraham saw beyond the moment. He believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead because he believed that God would keep His promise. Had God not stopped Abraham, it is clear that he would have plunged that knife into the heart of his own flesh and blood son and drained out his life on the spot.
You know, I have my little boy now. We adopted him earlier this year. He is almost two. We’ve had him since three days after he was born, first as a foster child. I love him so much. I am not sure that I have ever loved anyone or anything more. I love all my children. I was thinking about this and feeling very uneasy with it, because I was asking myself, do I love my children more than I love God? How could that be? Oh, God, help me not to love my children less but to love you more!
But I learned that I am not the only parent who has had such thoughts and grappled with such questions. Love, you see, is a principle. There is an emotional aspect, a bond that we have with each other, but love, true love, is built up of principle. If my child were to grow up and attempt to sell drugs out of my house, I would not allow it. But if I love him more than anything I would allow it, right? No. I love God and I know that drugs are destructive to human lives. I would not allow him to do that and I would not allow them in my house because I have determined that my house will not be a source adding to the poison of this world.
When I choose to not allow him to behave this way, I am choosing God’s ways above the ways of my son. To indulge him would be to destroy him and to harm others. While he is under my responsibility as a non-adult, I will be his parent and with all the wisdom I can muster I will be for him a model of Jesus. I will not model the boy. I will model Jesus for him, because, great as my emotional attachment to him has become, true love is principle, and a long-term approach will put God’s unselfish love first.
So you begin to see, it comes down to love as a principle. Love as a principle is willing to make decisions that may be painful to us in the moment, but will reap an eternity of good fruit. God is love (1 John 4:8). So He does not see us through the desire of one moment, but He cares for us with our long-term good in His heart.
Those of us who are parents must love in a principled way and not in a seasonal way. The pleasures of sin are for a season. Seasons end; love never ends (1 Corinthians 13:8). Love is more than an emotional attachment. It sees with eyes that look into forever—and chooses accordingly.
Flip Side
I worked for five years in a record store. In the old days, we had record players. You also had these little circular slabs of vinyl we called records. There as a list of the currently most popular songs. We arranged the 45’s all on the wall in a row according to whether they were number one, two, three, etc. on the charts. Customers came in to buy the 45’s. This was many years before anything like iPod.
Every 45 had a flip side. There was one song on the front of the record and one song on the back of it. All these 45’s had a front side and a flip. This takes us back again to the pleasures of sin for a season.
Sin has limitation. It ends. It lasts for but a season. But there is even more. Sin has a current flip side. God made man with a conscience. When you sin you violate that conscience. When you violate that conscience you experience guilt.
We all have delicate psyches, fragile hearts and minds. We might prefer to present ourselves as being very strong. But we are very thin. We are breakable.
We have all experienced it. We desire to do right. And we desire to do evil. The desire to do evil is always for a momentary, or, at least, a short-term “gain.” The desire to do righteousness may be overmastered by our thought that we can later repent, that we can later change direction.
The Scripture does not endorse such a plan.
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins (Prov 5:22).
This life is a season, a limited opportunity, a probation. You have free will and you may exercise it; but beware. With every choice to rebel against right, you tie another strong cord around yourself. See how one is bound by the cords of his own sins? Each and every sin is self-destructive.
What we want to do when we sin though, is to see the pleasure part but hide the pain part. We want to see the one aspect and defer or ignore the other. But this is not the way the conscience works. When you sin, you launch an attack upon yourself. You trigger the response of your own conscience. Your choice will result in sorrowful condemnation of yourself. What I am saying is that you cannot have even the pleasures of sin for a season without having the condemnation of sin with your choice to sin. You get the front side and the flip side.
What we commonly do, is limit our focus to the sin and try to ignore the gnawing condemnation we feel because of the mechanism of conscience, because of the urgent sorrow of the Holy Spirit who is seeking to help us see our sin and look to Christ for repentance and hope.
We try not to listen but we cannot keep ourselves from listening. So there is internal conflict. Thank God for it.
So it is not sin and pleasure now versus some pie-in-the-sky supposed Christian distant future. It is sin and self-condemnation now, versus the righteousness, peace, and contentment now and eternity following. This is a very different standpoint from which to view eternity.
It is the Moses Standpoint.
The Moses Standpoint
We sacrifice the pleasures of a season of sin and its condemnation throughout the season, for peace with God and our fellow man and ourselves now and for eternity. This is better math.
Some have viewed the concept of sacrifice as primitive, unenlightened, uninformed, a lesser kind of spiritual practice suited only for hearts lagging along in a lazy infancy. But sacrifice is among the most noble of the Christian graces. Unless we give up our sin and our love for sinning, we will not be prepared in mind and heart to dwell with those who we will know for eternity.
It is not the Christian who is willfully blind; it is the man who stifles conscience. It is the man who thinks he can get side A and bypass side B. It is not the man who sins who is free, but the man who receives the help of the Holy Spirit and feeds the image of God in himself rather than the character traits of Satan.
You have been granted a mind. What will you desire more? When you consider sinning, do it with your eyes open. Count all the cost. And realize that in the place of that sin, what you can have now, is righteousness, peace, contentment, joy, happiness, a conscience clear of offense toward God.
Yes, choose what you desire. Choose the sin and hate yourself more. Choose God’s way, deny yourself the sin, and receive from Him the peace that passes understanding. Be a free man, a truly free man. But you can only be free through Jesus. He will help. It is wrath or shalom; a season or eternity; despair or joy, reduction to the animal, or becoming through God’s sufficient strength, truly human.
Yes, choose this day who you will serve and know that who you choose today, self or God, will either make you worse or make you better. We are never saved by our own goodness, but it would please your God just as it would please your parents, if you did good. They hate to see you suffer, and so does God hate to see you suffer. Moses viewed life differently. Jesus viewed life differently. He is our Example. We must view life differently. Then we will see differently, value things differently, behave differently. Then the gospel will at last have landed, and in God’s children, a lost world will see that likeness which must change them for the better or the worse. Let us live so that it will be for the better. And to God be His glory. GCO
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