The Netherlorn Churches 12 August 2012

People of Faith No. 5: Inspiring Leadership

Exodus 2:1-10; Hebrews 11:23-29

Moses: A Child Saved by Faith These summer Sundays in Netherlorn find us walking with giants, with giants of faith. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph we have already met. Today it is Moses who is brought to our attention. To the people of Israel, Moses was the supreme figure in their history. He was the leader who had rescued them from slavery in Egypt and had received the Ten Commandments, the code by which they lived their lives. There is no end to what could be said about Moses but the point stressed in Hebrews 11 is that his whole life was shot through with acts of faith.

It all started when he was a new-born baby. Faith was exercised on his behalf by his parents, Amram and Jochebed. Just at the time he was born, Pharoah, king of Egypt, was alarmed at the rate of increase in the Hebrew slave population and gave the chilling decree that all baby boys among the Hebrews were to be put to death. This would have been the fate of Moses had not his parents taken the risky decision to defy the royal decree and keep their baby hidden. We are told they saw that he was a beautiful child. Well, is not every new-born baby in the eyes of the parents the most beautiful child who has ever been seen? Of course. But there seems to have been something more at work here. The beauty of the child was somehow a signal to Amram and Jochebed that God had purposes to fulfill in his life. No matter how great the risk to themselves, they had to keep him alive.

Anyone who has looked after a small baby knows how hard it is to keep them quiet and inconspicuous. When they need to cry, they will cry, no matter what the time of day or night. Keeping a baby hidden must have been no small task. After three months they could manage it no longer and, in the picture beloved of generations of Sunday Schools, they put the baby in a basket which they floated in the reeds at the edge of the river. An extraordinary thing to do with your baby! But these were desperate times and on any human reckoning his chances of survival were very slim. Amram and Jochebed, however, were people of faith. And we know that their faith was not disappointed.

1 Moses: the Big Decision Of all the people to discover the baby, it was the king’s own daughter who came to bathe in the river and discovered him. She decided to adopt him as her own. At a stroke his prospects in life were transformed. Instead of an early and bloody death being his fate, he grew up as a royal prince with every comfort and every opportunity that he could wish for. What a drama! And it is not finished yet. His new status meant that Moses grew up with a double identity, being both a royal prince and a member of a people languishing in slavery.

What if he ever had to choose between the two? This, in fact, is the next point which is made in Hebrews 11. The point came when he did have to choose. To all intents and purposes he was a prominent Egyptian – wealthy, well-educated, well-connected, the world at his feet. And yet he had never forgotten his origins and sensed the time had now come for him to identify with his own people at a decisive moment in their history. On any worldly reckoning it was a crazy decision that he made. He had it all … and he gave it all up in order to throw in his lot with an apparently inconsequential group of slaves. To throw up a prominent position in one of the great nations of ancient times in order to join the riff-raff who might be wiped out at any time – it made no sense.

It was faith, of course, which was the driving force. What seems inexplicable from a merely human perspective, took on an entirely different complexion when faith came into play. Moses sensed that God was at work and that God’s purpose was focused not on the great power but on the despised and oppressed underclass. The circumstances of his life meant that he had a foot in both camps but now he had to choose – where did his ultimate loyalty lie? He had to decide what mattered most to him.

It was a decision taken in full knowledge that he would pay a heavy price for it. Many years later Jesus said: “Happy are you when people insult you, and persecute you and tell all kinds of evil lies against you because you are my followers. Be happy and glad, for a great reward is kept for you in heaven.” (Matt. 5:11-12) Moses knew the score. He preferred to suffer with God’s people because he was convinced that, ultimately, it is God’s purposes which will triumph.

2 Still, it must have been a very tough decision to take. How easily he could have rationalized that he was in a much better position to serve the interests of his people if he continued as a prince of the royal house of Egypt. That strategy had worked for Joseph, why not for Moses? Something told him that a decisive point in history was approaching. It was going to be “make or break” for the Hebrew people. They were going to need leadership and it was his job to supply it. This was his calling. No matter what the cost he had to embrace it. We can only imagine that there were days and nights of sweating and agonizing as he worked his way through to the point of decision. The key to it was faith. No one would have guessed it but the eternal purposes of God were unfolding through the history of the slave community to which Moses belonged. This he grasped with all his heart and his decision was made.

A Costly Decision in Modern Times: Jane Haining From ancient Egypt fast forward to in Hungary in 1944. Jane Haining, a woman from a farm near Dunscore in -shire, is the Scottish who is matron of a hostel for Jewish girls at the Scots Mission. Over the past century there had been a major movement in Scotland to make connections with the Jews and to share the gospel with them. One of the main centres of this effort was in Budapest where there was a large Jewish population. By now it was a population in great danger since the Nazis had invaded Hungary and it was well- known that they had plans to get rid of the Jews.

Jane had already made her decision. She had been at home in Scotland when war broke out but had hurried back to Budapest to be with her girls. As the war intensified she was ordered by her bosses in to return home. She refused to come, sending instead the message: "If these children need me in the days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in the days of darkness?" Like Moses, she took the decision to throw in her lot with a persecuted people.

Now she faced the harsh realities of Nazi rule. One the things she found most painful is that she was required to sew yellow stars on the children’s clothes so that they would be instantly identified as Jewish children. Before long she was arrested and charged with 8 crimes. She denied charges of espionage but she admitted that she was working with Jews, had listened to the BBC and that she

3 had wept when she was sewing the yellow stars on the children’s clothes.

Together with the children in the hostel she was eventually taken to Auschwitz where she was put to death in the gas chambers on 17th July 1944. Her last letter was a postcard to friends, asking for food. It finished with the words: “There is not much to report here on the way to heaven.” Here was someone who lived out the text written about Moses: “She reckoned that to suffer scorn for the Messiah was worth far more than all the treasures of Egypt, for she kept her eyes on the future reward.”

Chris is leading the worship at Kilbrandon and Kilchattan today and will also highlight Jane Haining - we could not think of anyone who better exemplifies in modern times the decision to identify with a persecuted people because of a commitment arising from faith.

In Jane’s case she lost her life as a result but her witness lives on. Christian- Jewish relations have not always been easy but the sacrificial love shown by Jane has crossed the deep division. A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit , memorial in . It attempts to maintain the memory of all the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Day and night their names are read out. There is also a special garden to remember the “Righteous among the Nations” – those who stood with the Jews in their darkest hour. Only one Scot has a tablet there in her memory – Jane Haining.

She has been called Scotland’s Schindler. has written of her as one of the people of courage who inspired him in his life. In 2010 the Municipality of Budapest renamed part of the city the Jane Haining District. Her story seems to become more cherished as the years pass. The decision she made might look foolish on any normal human reckoning but she had the faith to see through to a deeper and truer reckoning where sacrificial love for a persecuted people is at the heart of the purpose of God.

Moses – Seeing the big picture and acting on it That is faith and it makes all the difference. Coming back to Moses, there are a couple of other incidents in his life that Hebrews 11 brings to our attention. One is that he established the Passover, the festival speaking of God’s redemption which has ever since been definitive of Jewish identity. He established it not as a 4 one-off but as something that was to be continued through all their history. A betting man might have thought that the most likely thing to happen to the Hebrews is that they would be wiped out by the might of the Egyptian army. But Moses made a different calculation, one based on his faith that God was committed to this particular slave rabble and would see them through whatever dangers and obstacles they might face.

In fact, they were not long in finding themselves in front of a major obstacle in the shape of the Red Sea with the imminent danger that the army of Egypt was in hot pursuit and likely to cut them down in short order. The outcome was one which the people of Israel would never forget – the sea parted to allow them to cross and then returned to engulf the Egyptian army. So the faith of Moses was vindicated. When everyone else was in despair and wishing they had never left Egypt, he kept his nerve and insisted that God would see them through. What a risky position he was in but he was convinced he was right at the centre of the purpose of God and nothing was going to shake him.

His great strength was that he had been through the valley of decision. He had been at the parting of the ways where he had to choose between his own comfort and security and the risky path to which God was calling him. He had weighed it all up. He got clarity in his mind about what mattered most. Then he was ready for anything. There is no limit to what God can do with someone with this kind of faith. Who knows when the moment will come that we have to take a decision which determines the whole direction of our life from that point on? Let’s be ready for it. And let’s be ready to take the path of faith, no matter how costly it may appear. We will never regret it.

In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

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