Hebrews 11:24
There is no period more fraught with potentialities for good or evil than the time that is indicated in our title. While children we have others to decide for us, and ours is the place of obedience to parents and teachers. When we come to years we inevitably come to the time when responsibility lies on our own shoulders. It is the time when each one makes choice of that which either makes or mars life.
Doubtless the early training often helps the young person to make a right choice. Wise would it have been for Rehoboam, if he had listened to the counsels of his father, as given to us in the Book of Proverbs. He thought that he knew better than his father and made a fool of himself, and wrecked his kingdom. “Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment” (Job 32:9). Neither are the young always wise, as in Rehoboam’s case. When a youth attains to mature age he often realizes that his father was wiser than once he thought. It has often been said that experience is a dear school to learn in, and frequently the young will learn in none other. Experience never forgets to charge a fee, and sometimes it is an exorbitant one, loss of wealth, health and even life, as many a young man has found to his fearful cost.
Moses had the wonderful privilege of godly parents. Not only godly, but courageous were they, especially the mother. When the reward for their faithfulness took the unexpected turn of the doomed child being protected by the very daughter of the cruel monarch that had given out the decree, which the parents braved, the sister with the quick wit of her race, and doubtless under the overruling hand of the Lord, suggested that the mother of Moses might be chosen to be his nurse.
Then came the crucial time for Moses,
“WHEN HE WAS COME TO YEARS.”
The time for choice had come. What use would he make of it? Put yourself in his shoes. Picture him walking in the palace of the Pharaohs far into the night. He had an assured place which all might envy. The son of Pharaoh’s daughter, affluence, learning, position, wealth, honour as the world counts honour—all were his.
The choice—on the one hand the favour of the mighty Pharaoh, on the other “the wrath of the king”; on the one side the smile of the world, on the other “the reproach of Christ.” Should he turn his back upon the position that he had, a position that perhaps no humbly born alien had ever before attained to, and take sides with alien slaves? Should he exchange his bed of roses for the howling wilderness, the drought to consume by day and the frost by night?
The young man was faced with a choice, the contrasts of which were more marked in his case than in other other.
But Moses had a wonderful vision. “He endured as seeing him that is invisible.” Altering the words without altering the sense in order to give a sharper definiteness to their meaning, “He endured as seeing Him that cannot be seen.” It sounds a paradox, a contradiction of words. Yet how true! He saw with the eye of faith what the eye of nature could not see. He saw with that divine quality what the keenest brain could have no knowledge of. So much so, that what is wisdom with God, is folly with man. Men might deplore that the young Moses, with those grand qualities of mind and body that marked him early as a1eader of men, should play the fool, throw away chances that every other young man in the kingdom would give both hands to possess.
But he was truly wise. His choice was sound. He had his eye on the future. The pleasures of sin were only for a season, and he chose affliction with the people of God. They were poor whip-driven slaves serving with rigour, but they were THE PEOPLE OF GOD. That settled it for Moses. His was folly indeed in the eyes of the world. It was in fact divine astuteness that marked him. “He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect to the recompense of the reward.”
It is a soul-stirring picture. We are moved to intense admiration for a young man of such grit and courage. We follow his after-career with increasing interest. What equipoise of character was his! We mark his meekness. His was no swelled head. Yet we see him in scenes of wonderful setting. On the mountaintop with God receiving the law and the ordering of the tabernacle. Long years after we see him again on the mountain top with God, ever alone with God. He has had forty years at the backside of the desert. He has had forty years as leader of God’s delivered people through the wilderness. His natural force is unabated. His vision is as keen as ever. At the bidding of God he lay down his wonderful life. God buried him and was sole Mourner at his grave.
Had he chosen the palace, he might have been buried in the Egyptian “Westminster Abbey,” and that with the pomp of a mighty nation, with the pageantry pertaining to royalty.
But not one line concerning him would have been found in the Word of God. He might have made his mark upon the Egypt of his own time, and his mummy lain in some Museum today. But it would have stirred only a feeble interest, and to the question, Who was this Moses? only a very meagre answer would have been given.
But Moses with the choice he made has made his mark for the whole world and for all time.
There is a world of meaning in the words of our title and text,
“WHEN HE WAS COME TO YEARS.”
Perhaps some of our readers are arriving at such a stage. You have your choice to make. What shall it be? Look far ahead beyond this present life. Gaze on the Invisible. Let your choice be truly wise. The Lord help you, for the issues are eternal, and a mistake may be irrevocable.