The Man With Two Mothers Series

OPEN: Real Mothers are special people.

Real mothers would like to be able to eat a whole candy bar (all by themselves) and drink a Coke without any "floaters" in it.

Real Mothers know that their kitchen utensils are probably going to end up in the sandbox.

Real Mothers often have sticky floors, filthy ovens and happy kids.

Real Mothers know that dried play dough doesn’t come out of shag carpets.

Real Mothers sometimes ask "Why me?" and get their answer when a little voice says, "Because I love you best."

Real Mothers know that a child’s growth is not measured by height or years or grade.

It is marked by the progression of Mama to Mom to Mother...

APPLY: Real mothers are an integral part of our lives.

We wouldn’t be who we are without our mothers.

Some of the greatest people in history will tell you how important their mothers were to their lives. George Washington, for example, declared: “All I am I owe to my mother”.

This was also true of one of the greatest men in Old Testament history, a man named Moses. Moses became the kind of man he was because of the type of mother he had. In fact, who he was, was very much determined by the type of MOTHERS he had, because God gave Moses two mothers.

And they were both good mothers because they both had some of the same instincts for their roles.

For example: They both loved babies

Now, that may seem like a given… but not every woman loves kids.

ILLUS: I once read the story of a woman who went shopping for swimsuits with her mother.

In the department store, though, she was having a hard time finding one that fit. After trying on at least 10, all to no avail, she grew increasingly frustrated.

Trying to calm her, her mother said "Look at it this way: what would you rather have – the husband and three children who adore you, or a swimsuit that fits?"

Before she could answer, a faceless voice from the next dressing room stall replied

"I want a swimsuit that fits!"

Not every woman wants kids.

But these two did.

And that WAS no small thing in their day because Moses’ 2 mothers lived in a culture of death.

A decree had gone out from the throne of Pharaoh that every male child born to a Hebrew was to thrown into the Nile and drowned. And Moses’ birth mother – Jochebed – was a Hebrew woman.

Thus, she had a choice to make.

The society in which she lived made it virtually impossible to keep her child and she could have decided to simply allow her child to be thrown away. I mean - her son was not wanted.

She could have chosen death (the easy choice)… but she chose life instead.

And this was not an easy decision for Jochebed to make.

It required her to hide her child for 3 whole months always fearing that Egyptian soldiers would discover the baby… and not only would they kill her child but punish her entire family for disobeying the law.

Choosing life was not an easy decision.

But then consider Pharaoh’s daughter.

She knew who this baby was.

Exodus 2:6 tells us “She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. ‘This is one of the Hebrew babies,’ she said.”

She knew he was a Hebrew.

Her father had decreed these children should die.

Her society had decided that these babies shouldn’t live.

Common wisdom had determined that these children were a threat to their nation.

It would have been so easy to let the child die.

But she chose life instead.

Both mothers lived in a culture of death.

Both mothers lived in a society that has decreed certain children shouldn’t live.

And so do we.

ILLUS: Just last month, down in Florida, they had proposed a law that would have required abortion providers to offer pregnant mothers the opportunity to see ultrasounds of their unborn children.

That’s ALL that law would have required.

In fact, the bill did NOT require the mothers to look at the ultrasounds.

And yet that law died in the Florida senate.

Why? Because we live in a culture of death

We live in a society that decrees that certain children should die.

(AP – David Royse – May 1, 2008)

Now I want you to understand something:

God punished Egypt because of their culture of death.

Egypt’s culture of death required that every male child born to the Hebrews was to die.

When God punished Egypt He bro’t 10 plagues down upon them. Do you remember what the last one was?

God decreed: “Every FIRSTBORN SON in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill...” Exodus 11:5