In Hebrews 11:26, Moses “regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as far more valuable than all the wealth of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.”
So, whatever reward Moses was looking forward to, it totally outweighed everything that the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world had to offer. It also made disgrace and suffering “for the sake of Christ” totally worth the pain inflicted too. The best and worst of the world, therefore, couldn’t make a dent in Moses’ anticipated reward, so it must have been something very special to him, but what?
Was it, for instance, God’s promise in Exodus 6:3-5 to free the Israelites from Egypt and “give them the land of Canaan”? Was that the reward Moses had in mind? But according to Deuteronomy 32:49-52, God told Moses that because of the one occasion when Moses didn’t trust him, “you (personally) will not enter the land I’m giving to the people of Israel.” No reward for Moses there, then.
Was he looking forward, instead, to God fulfilling his long term promise to Abraham that “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (Genesis 22:18)? Moses knew a greater world was coming; for all nations to experience it, therefore, would mean resurrecting those who’d died. So was being resurrected from the dead into this glorious new world the ultimate reward Moses was looking ahead to?
Or was there something else going on in Moses’ life that hinted at what he looked forward to most of all? There’s a clue in Exodus 3, when God told Moses he was sending him to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt (10), and Moses’ immediate reply in verse 11 was, “Who am I (to do such a thing)?” And that’s when God answered with five words in verse 12, that would carry Moses through the greatest adventure of his life, and make God so real to him that nothing could be greater – those five words being: “I will be with you.”
And after years of knowing what God being with him was like, he could tell the Israelites on their way into Canaan that “The Lord God himself will cross over (into Canaan) ahead of you,” Deuteronomy 31:3, so, verse 6, “Don’t you ever be afraid or terrified, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” And that was the reward Moses valued more than anything else, that had come from “A lifetime of knowing God”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 