Better
Volume Twenty Three — View Song — — Get the Free Devo App
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. (Hebrews 11:24-25)
Many spend their lives trying to attain status, secure comfort, ensure pleasure, and amass treasure. Fame, pleasure, ease, and fortune sit as the golden coins in the pot at the end of humanity’s rainbow. Many want to make a name for themselves. They want to drink from the wine of delight, however illicit. They want money and all that money can bring them. For this men fight. For this they live. And for this they die.
What an amazement it must have been, then, to watch a man, in the prime of life, refuse to drink from this glittering chalice placed before him. A royal name was offered to him, but Moses refused. The ease of dwelling in a palace and being served night and day was held out; he pushed it away. The lid was opened, and the sparkling treasures of Egypt were within reach; he didn’t take hold of them. The whisper of sexual enticement and all other seducing passions beckoned; he turned his back.
What did he prefer? What did he reach after? What did he consider better than all the world could offer?
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. (Hebrews 11:24-25)
Suffering and reproach with an enslaved people. That is what he chose. How did he do it?
The Key to Shunning This World
The whole chapter of Hebrews 11 points to the answer. Throughout the chapter, the point of showing how God’s people refused to shrink back is to illustrate faith. What is faith? “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). It is the appropriation of unseen things, hoped-for things, to the mind and heart. It is the conviction that God is, and that he rewards those who seek him. “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
So as Moses watched his Israelite kinsmen suffer brutal slavery, he saw more than their chains. When Moses considered the reward of sin offered him by remaining compliant to his Egyptian upbringing, he saw greater treasure elsewhere. He knew that the God of Israel was, and that he rewarded those who sought him — even when that seeking led away from Egypt’s palace and into mistreatment.
He Alone Is Better
Moses sang the song of faith:
Your love is better than life;
You are the well that won’t run dry.
I have tasted, and I have seen
You are better than all these things.
How can we sing this song more joyfully than we do now?
Consider where Moses’s eyes rested: “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:26). His eyes were not looking to Egypt’s rewards. Nor were they properly fixed on the reproach. They looked past both of these to God’s reward.
This was his secret: seeing a better reward with a better reward-Giver. This reward stood so superior in Moses’s conception that a life of mistreatment thrown in with this reward didn’t make him waver for a minute. And what is our reward that we focus on, that makes us cry, “Better”?“Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). He, and he alone, is better.
