Freedom Child Series

I read the true story of a Sunday School for 4-year-olds'.

Most of the children were known to the teacher, but this Sunday a little boy showed up without any identification.

The teacher managed to get his first name, but couldn't find out his last name.

"Brian, what's your daddy's name?" she asked.

"Daddy," he replied.

She tried again, "Brian, what's your mommy's name?"

"Mommy," he answered.

Suddenly she realized exactly how she could get the answer she needed.

"Brian, what does your daddy call your mommy?"

His face lit up. With a grin and a deep voice, he replied, "Hey, Babe."

(Susan Boatright, Savannah, GA. Today's Christian Woman, "Heart to Heart.")

APPLY: Children learn from what they see and what they hear. What this boy learned in his home was that his mother and father loved each other, and that his dad was a playful and confident man.

Children learn from what they see and hear.

And it is what they see and hear that shapes and molds the type of person they become.

(PAUSE)

As I was preparing for today’s sermon something occurred to me. In our story today we find that God had heard the cry of His people and was going to send a “deliverer” and He sends them someone.

Who does He send?

A baby!

Really? A baby?

Yes, in fact God did that several times in Israel’s history.

For example, there was Samson.

In the days of the judges, the people of God had sinned against Him, and so God delivered them into the hands of their enemies - the Philistines. But when they cried out for help, He chose a baby named Samson to be their deliverer.

Then several years later God sent Samuel.

Again, Israel had become subject to the Philistines all over again, because of their sinfulness. But when they cried out for help, God heard their cry, and again He chose a baby to be their deliverer.

Sometime later in Scripture, the people had again fallen into sin and God sent them a prophet named Jeremiah. Jeremiah was chosen to warn God’s people while he was still a baby in his mother’s womb.

God seems to like babies.

But there’s a problem with babies being deliverers… each of these babies had to grow up before God could use them. It would take them 20 or 30 years for them to be useful as deliverers. In Moses’ case it took about 80 years before God made use of him.

Why would God do it that way?

The Bible doesn't tell us.

And God’s not saying why.

But I think I can make a few educated guesses.

1st – I believe God chose to select Moses as a Baby, because He wanted to fully prepare Moses for the task he was to perform.

You see, the role Moses was to play was going to change the course of human history.

• Not only was he to be the deliverer of Israel from their bondage in Egypt, but he was going to end up being the man who would shape who Israel was to become for the next few centuries.

• Additionally, Moses was to be the man who gave them God’s Law, and he then had to explain enforce that Law.

• And, Moses had to be enough of a leader that he could hold together over a million people… people who were often hard to get along with, who were often unruly and rebellious. And he had to lead those people out of their slavery into God’s promised Land.

Not just any man could have done this job.

This was a job for a man who had been trained for it… trained from birth.

Now notice how God did this.

1st He chose a woman He could trust - and a woman who would trust Him - to be Moses’ mother.

Exodus 2:3 tells us “When (his mother) could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.”

Now why would she do that?

Well, because she’d run out of options.

She’d hidden the boy for 3 months… but she was now in danger of being discovered.

So she did the only thing a Godly mother could do… she trusted God.

She could no longer protect her child, so she put him in a basket and placed him the river, totally giving her child over to God’s hands.

And then had his sister Miriam watch to see what would happen.

Then - God had the daughter of Pharaoh - “discover” the child.

This was the daughter of the man who decreed death for the boy children of Israel. And yet, even though Pharaoh’s daughter knew this child was “one of the Hebrews’ children” (Exodus 2:6) she took him as her own --- and raised him in the courts of Egypt.