PLEASURE OR DISGRACE?

Today’s reading considers events around the exodus and the conquest of Canaan. Two things seemed to be in the writer’s mind. He had already said that the wilderness generation was faithless and that Joshua did not give the people rest.1 Consequently, he now ignores the wilderness wanderings, jumping from the exodus to Jericho – and chooses to highlight Rahab over Joshua.

He deals with the faith of Moses’ parents and of Moses himself, who rejected association with Pharaoh’s court with all its pleasures, choosing instead mistreatment with God’s people and ‘disgrace for the sake of Christ’ (v. 26). By faith, Moses also left Egypt unafraid of the Pharaoh’s anger and he kept the Passover. Then, by faith, the people went through the Red Sea on dry land. The writer recalls how the walls of Jericho fell by faith (without saying that Joshua initiated this) and how Rahab saved her life when she received the spies in peace. The ultimate outcome of this faithful act is her inclusion in the genealogy of Jesus.2

Today’s highlight for me is the faith of Moses, who ‘regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward’ (v. 26). That he identified with Jesus and chose disgrace for his sake sounds incongruous, given that Moses lived hundreds of years before Jesus but, as Harold Attridge suggests, as a prophet ‘Moses could have been understood to be aware of the … one who would bring God’s promises to reality.’3 With prophetic insight, Moses saw Jesus, ‘the pioneer and perfecter of faith’4 and chose to identify with him, whatever the cost. In Hebrews 13:13 the writer will also call us to be prepared to bear the reproach of Christ.