To Encourage You

Hebrews 11:29 “By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned.”

Two people can do exactly the same thing but have completely different motivations for doing so. Thus, the Bible teaches us that it is the motives behind our actions, not just the actions themselves, that are all important in life. 

Loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves are the greatest commandments God has ever given us (Matthew 22:38-40). Yet people can do what are seemingly loving acts but have no love at all as their motive for doing them. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 talks about it in this way: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” It can be said that not only are these loveless acts “nothing,” but they are “worse than nothing,” for a self-deceived worker of works will come to nothing himself in the end! 

In the passage above from Hebrews 11 we have the same lesson being taught.  Here it talks about the great miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea.  The Israelites, in obedience that came from faith, crossed the Red Sea as on dry ground. It was a miraculous display of the power of God that is referred to often throughout the Scriptures. But notice that the Egyptians, who were the very enemies of God and His people, also attempted to pass through the Red Sea just like the Israelites. And what was their motive? It was to slaughter the Israelites.  It was a motive that was anything but the glory of God. It was a display of faithless presumption rather than genuine faith. And the end of their actions was death.

In what can be thought of as a parallel account, Jesus warned about those who pray, not as a display of faith, but as a means to bring glory to themselves. He also taught about those who fast and give to the needy, the very same things that people who truly love Him do, but that do these things “before other people in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). He warns that those who do such thing will receive a full reward, i.e., it’s the only reward they are really seeking, to be thought of as wonderful people in the eyes of those before which they practice their hypocrisy. However, the ultimate end of those who do such things will be to hear these words from the Savior: “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23).  Sadly, that was exactly the fate of the Egyptian army that is referred to in Hebrews 11 above.  The very path of faith and salvation through the Red Sea that God’s people trod became the path of death for the faithless. 

So, the question for each of us is this: Why are we doing the things we are doing? Why do we give? Why do we pray? Why do we do anything?  When we eat and drink and do anything else that we do in life, do we do so to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Or are we throwing our efforts into things, even great and wonderful things, but from motives that are other than faith in God. 

Faith is one thing. Presumption is another. One leads to salvation and life everlasting, but the other leads only to death. May God help us to look hard at our motives, for God’s Word is clear, He’s looking at them very closely and knows the truth about them, although we can be so self-deceived.