For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. {Ephesians 2:8, 9} Moses was forty years old when he fled Egypt for fear of his life. Forty years later he came back to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. What had changed? He had made his great decision. He concluded that faith and truth in company with agony and hardship were better than wealth and fame and the absence of God’s love. Few men in history have been called upon to make a more difficult decision than his.
A Man of Faith Moses was a man of education and culture, a man of wealth and prominence. As the son of Pharaoh’s daughter he had been accustomed to every honor, every luxury, and every privilege. The throne of Egypt, richest, most powerful, most spectacularly successful country of its time, was within his grasp. Yet the Bible records that “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:24-27). This passage was referring to Moses after his forty years in the wilderness with God — not the fiery young murderer who fled from Pharaoh in fear of his life.
Notice, it says that he “refused” and he “forsook”— this is true repentance. And then it says he did it “by faith”! This is the next step — faith. Moses made this decision not in a moment of overt emotionalism that some psychologists insist is necessary for religious experience. He was not motivated by frustration. He was not a hopeless misfit or an unfulfilled man. Moses was not choosing the path of God as a compensation for the rewards that he felt life had withheld from him, nor was he turning to the religious life out of boredom and apathy. He did not want for interest, entertainment, and amusement.
