Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people
of
God
The Israelites, who were God's chosen and peculiar people, and
were the true worshippers of him; Moses chose to be with those:
the company and conversation of such is most eligible to every
good man, because God is with them; his word and ordinances are
with them; there are large provisions of grace in the midst of
them; so that it is profitable, delightful, and honourable, to be
among them, and is attended with comfort, peace, and
satisfaction: but then those are a poor, and an afflicted people;
affliction is with them, for the sake of God, and Christ, and the
truths which they profess, and the worship and service they are
engaged in; and their afflictions are many and grievous: and now
Moses chose to suffer these with them, to suffer the same
afflictions they did, and to sympathize with them: and this was
more eligible to him,
than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a
season:
meaning, either the pleasures, honours, and riches in Pharaoh's
court, attended with sin; as indulging himself in the luxury of a
court, when his brethren were in distress; approving Pharaoh's
cruelty and persecution, at least conniving at it, and not
opposing it, which could not be without sin; carrying himself as
the son of Pharaoh's daughter, when he was an Hebrew; and
preferring his own ease to the deliverance of his people; and now
these, had he continued at court, would have been but for a short
season: or else sinful lusts in general are intended, in which
men promise themselves much pleasure, when it is only imaginary,
and lasts but for a while neither; and both may be intended, and
are what the Jews call F13 (egr ygwnet) , "pleasures for a moment", or momentary
ones. And the reasons which might induce Moses, and so every good
man, to such a choice, may be taken partly from the nature of
afflictions themselves, which are such that God has chosen for
them, and appointed them unto, and which he gives them to suffer
for his name, and which are an honour to them, and issue in their
good, and in the glory of God; and partly from the nature of
sinful pleasures; there is no solidity, nor satisfaction, in the
best of worldly enjoyments; there can be no true pleasure in sin;
there is always bitterness in the end, and it issues in death, if
grace prevent not: now it was by faith Moses made this choice,
for it is manifestly contrary to flesh and blood: it showed him
to be a man thoroughly acquainted with the nature of sin; and
that he looked beyond the things of sense and time, to those of
eternity.