Learning How to be a Faithful Farmer for God’s Harvest!

The Faith that Humbles You!

Hebrews 11:23-29 (NASB)

God is in the business of transforming stories through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are to grow strong in God’s grace as active participants in the world He created. God has entrusted His creation to His people to work as His Harvest workers – “All the world’s a field, and all the disciples of Jesus Christ merely farmers!” Therefore, let’s be faithful farmers by following the four-step strategy of a hard-working farmer: 1) cultivate people with faith; 2) sow the good seed of God’s grace (the gospel) into their hearts and minds; 3) care for them as their stories are transformed into fruit-bearing plants; and 4) reap a harvest of praise as the church of Jesus Christ. This strategy must be empowered by the Holy Spirit because apart from God we cannot bear any good fruit (John 15:5). Therefore, harvest workers of God’s kingdom are called to grow strong in God’s grace. Let’s take the first step by learning from the transforming stories of the Hall of Faith, found in Hebrews 11.

STEP #1 OF THE FARMER’S STRATEGY: CULTIVATE THE SOIL WITH FAITH

Today’s story is about Moses, found in Hebrews 11:23-29:

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as though they were passing through dry land; and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned.

This is the Word of God; let us pray: God, we invite you to cultivate the soil of our hearts with faith to receive the good seed of Your Word! May Your grace work in us and through us so that our stories point to Your story and reap a harvest of praise to the glory of God.

STEP #2 OF THE FARMER’S STRATEGY: SOW THE GOOD SEED OF GOD’S GRACE

The first forty years of Moses’ life are that of legends – Moses’ foundational years! This part of Moses’ story, highlighted in Hebrews 11:23-27, is told in Exodus 2:1-15:

Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got him a wicker basket and covered it over with tar and pitch. Then she put the child into it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to find out what would happen to him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the Nile, with her maidens walking alongside the Nile; and she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid, and she brought it to her. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the boy was crying. And she had pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go ahead.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. And she named him Moses, and said, “Because I drew him out of the water.” Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the next day, and behold, two Hebrews were fighting with each other; and he said to the offender, “Why are you striking your companion?” But he said, “Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and said, “Surely the matter has become known.” When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

The seed of faith was put into Moses, but in his first forty years, a time of privilege and prestige for Moses, he did not know how to wield the power of his position to do good – to protect his people, the Israelites (the Hebrews), so in his haste to do so, he killed an Egyptian man and fled from the wrath of his adoptive father, a man who had ordered his death once before in Exodus 1:15-22.

God’s grace was given to the people of Israel in the man of Moses, but Moses’ foundational years did not prepare him properly to be a man God could use for His purposes. He fled Egypt, according to our passage in Hebrew 11:23-27, because God had to take him to a place where He could care for Moses and bring him to maturity. It was in the next forty years of his life that the faith of Moses was formed so that he was a man God could use for His glory.

STEP #3 OF THE FARMER’S STRATEGY: CARE FOR THE MATURING PLANT

The second forty years of Moses’ life were the most important – Moses’ formative years! This part of his story is not mentioned in Hebrews 11, it is found between Hebrews 11:27 & 28. This period begins in Exodus 2:16-22, where Moses is taken in by Jethro the priest of Midian, who takes him in to his household; Moses marries Zipporah, one of his daughters, starts his family (they have two sons), and he serves Jethro as a shepherd. In exile, Moses goes from being an exalted prince of Egypt to a humbled shepherd, an occupation despised by the Egyptians. This forty-year period is summarized in Exodus 3:1, “Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro,” but by the end of these formative years something is about to happen, as indicated in the verses in Exodus 2:23-25:

Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them.

Moses was put into exile at the age of 40, having escaped the wrath of his adopted father, the king of Egypt, until the day of his Pharaoh’s death, around the time Moses would have been 80. There is an appointed time for everything, and we must remember a very important lesson as the people of faith: God is always doing more than we can see or imagine! God is doing a larger work in the nations and through His people. You are a part of that, but you are not the center of it – God is the main character of our story; it’s His story that is being told through our stories! We must be formed into the kind of people He can use.

God’s people were in Egypt for 400 years, but it was in these 40 years of Moses’ exile that God set the conditions for the Exodus. It was during his years as Jethro’s shepherd that Moses became a humbled man, broken and contrite, the kind of person God could use. You see, Jethro the priest of Midian, turned his countenance toward Moses, which means he took him in as a his own, protected him, and gave him a new family. A family of security, hard work, and commitment to the community. At just the right time, when both the conditions were set and Moses was formed into a man God could use and trust, God called Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:18) to enter the third phase of his life – the formidable years!  

STEP #4 OF THE FARMER’S STRATEGY: REAP A HARVEST OF PRAISE

The final forty years of Moses’ life tell the most famous story ever told – Moses’ formidable years! This part of Moses’ story was highlighted in Hebrews 11:28-29, and it began after his burning bush experience with God and didn’t conclude until his death forty years later, after accomplishing all that God had set for him to do – to rescue and deliver His chosen people from slavery, defeating the most powerful military in the world and leading them to the Promised Land.

Interestingly, all three periods of Moses’ life, each of which were forty years long, ended with a reference to Moses’ relationship with the father-figure who defined each of these three distinct seasons of his life:

We remember Moses because of his epic birth story, the kind of backstory that we give our heroes. We remember Moses because of his supernatural call narrative, the kind of experience we give those who are called to do formidable tasks for God. We remember Moses because of the Exodus, his victory over the Egyptian military machine, and all of his awesome deeds as a leader of a newly formed nation that was constantly grumbling and rebelling against him and their God.

We don’t remember Moses for being a faithful shepherd, husband, and father, but I believe the forty years he was defined by these relationships and responsibilities that he was shaped into the man of God who did everything else we do talk about. The forty years that didn’t make it into Hebrews 11 are the years that forged the character of Moses from being a pampered prince to being a formidable prophet! Often, the most important parts of our stories are found in the in-between times (the liminal space), for Moses that was the forty years as a shepherd serving his father-in-law. Forty years is a long stretch of time in a person’s life, especially when it comes in what is supposed to be your most productive years of life, but this is where Moses was forged into a humble man that God could use, knowing that Moses would not take the credit for it or hijack it for his own purposes. Moses wasn’t ready to reap a harvest of praise with his life until God nurtured him through his forty years of exile. This was an essential experience for Moses; otherwise, how would Moses have known why God caused His people to wander in the desert for their own forty years of formation to enter the formidable season of conquest under Joshua’s leadership.

Oftentimes, God forges our character through the circumstances of our lives, just as we learned from the story of Joseph. We must be transformed by the renewing of our minds, forged in the crucible of life circumstances before we are able to reap a harvest of praise to God! As Jesus said in John 12:24-26:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

I conclude with this thought about Moses and Jesus: both are described as humble! Numbers 12:3 is a parenthetic statement about Moses, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.” Moses had a faith that humbled him, so that he would be the formidable man of God who stood against the most powerful man in the world and led his people to freedom after four hundred years under Egyptian rule. Jesus described Himself in Matthew 11:29 as “gentle and humble in heart.” Jesus was the second Moses, who stood against all the forces of evil, defeated sin and death, and leads His people to freedom!

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