Family Faith Series

Object Lesson – Whirlpool in the Sanctuary. Have all the youth run a circle and then pick the smallest youth and have him or her run in the opposite direction.

I think this is the same way that we, as Christians, find our selves feeling towards the world and culture around us. As we read God’s Word, as we pray and talk with God, as we listen to messages at youth group or church, it doesn’t take long to understand that God wants us to be different from the rest of the world. In the New Testament we are called aliens and strangers in this world. We talked last week about Joseph’s knowledge that Egypt and this world was not his home but only the Promised Land and the paradise that God had promised was his home. We have higher standards of living and morality. We are asked to be holy and to be set apart.

Hearing God’s Word and understanding what it says isn’t the hardest part though. The tough part is living the lives that God has called us to live. We leave church and suddenly it seems like we step into a giant whirlpool and we are being asked to swim against the current. You want to follow God’s Word but it seems impossible because everyone around you is swearing, or messing around, or doing things they shouldn’t, or lying or cheating. And then, if being around it isn’t bad enough, they all want you to do it too. Usually we try at first but then we are eventually so overwhelmed and become so tired that we give in and just give up trying. How many of you have ever felt that way at school? Or at home?

You guys are not alone in this challenge. Every Christian on the face of the earth has felt this same way at some point in their life. The next two weeks we are going to be looking at some stories from the life of Moses. And Moses was one guy who, from his very birth until the day he died, seemed to be constantly going against the current of the world. Tonight I want to look at the amazing act of faith that Moses’ parents went through in order to save Moses’ life.

If you remember from last week, we talked about Joseph and how he and his family lived out the rest of their lives in the nation of Egypt. Joseph’s family numbered from 70 to 75 people originally but over time their family grew so much that they were starting to outnumber the Egyptian people. Eventually a pharaoh took over in Egypt who really hated the Israelite people and decided that something had to be done about the number of them in Egypt. First, the pharaoh tried to work the Israelite people so hard that they would be too tired to try to reproduce. That didn’t work so then he ordered the women who would deliver the Israelites babies to kill all the boys that were born. That again didn’t work, so finally pharaoh took the problem into his own hands and ordered the Egyptian people that every boy that was born to the Israelites was to be thrown into the Nile River. It is soon after this decree was made that a young Israelite women was due to give birth to a son. Let’s pick up the story from here by reading Exodus 2:1-10.

***Read Exodus 2:1-10***

In Hebrews 11:23, Moses’ parents were commended for this act of faith. Moses’ parents in this chapter went against the culture they were living in. They noticed something special about Moses and they took an act of faith by placing the baby in the Nile. There are two big lessons that I think we can learn about faith from this story.

The first thing that I think we can learn from this is that Moses’ parents trusted God completely and were not afraid of what Pharaoh had ordered. As we saw in both Exodus and Hebrews, Moses’ parents knew there was something different about Moses. Exodus says that they saw he was a fine child and Hebrews says that they saw he was no ordinary child. This most likely went deeper than the fact that Moses was a beautiful baby. I mean what parent wouldn’t say their child was beautiful and what parent wouldn’t try to save their child from being killed. Moses’ parents knew that God had plans for their little boy and decided that following God was better than following Pharaoh.

Disobeying the orders of Pharaoh surely would have had harsh consequences but they didn’t matter. I’m sure there were other families who gave in to Pharaohs orders and had their children killed in order to save their own lives and the rest of their families. Moses’ parents took a major risk with their actions.