It's A Boy! Series

Introduction:

A. Top 10 Things Not To Say While Your Wife is in Labor...

#10. Women are so lucky! I sure wish men could experience the miracle of childbirth.

#9. Do you think the baby will come before Monday Night Football starts?

#8. I hope you’re ready for a picture, the photographer will be here in fifteen minutes.

#7. If you think this hurts, I should tell you about the time I twisted my ankle playing basketball.

#6. That was the kids on the phone, they want to know what you are making for dinner?

#5. Wow, honey, when you lay on your back, you look like a python that swallowed a wild boar.

#4. Honey, you don't need an epidural - Just relax and enjoy the moment.

#3. This whole experience kind of reminds me of an episode from I Love Lucy.

#2. Remember the breathing we learned in childbirth class! It’s HEE HEE HOO HOO. You're not using the right words.

#1. Wow, honey, your stomach still looks like there's another one in there.

- I guess it’s a guy thing!

B. The birth of a child is such an exciting time for everyone.

1. I well remember the birth of our three daughters - what a miracle it is to see a new life come into the world, right before you eyes.

2. This week my second youngest brother, Jim, and his wife, Meredith, had their second child – It’s a boy! Patrick Weslyn Grimsley - 8 lbs. 9 oz, 22 inches long.

3. Praise God for the baby boom we have been having around here lately!

C. Most of the time, when a baby is born it is a time of celebration.

1. Occasionally, babies are born at inopportune times, or under sad circumstances.

2. Moses was certainly that kind of baby.

3. In many respects, Moses was born at the absolutely worst possible time.

4. He was born as a Jew into a land ruled by an anti-Semitic despot.

5. His people, the Hebrews, were suffering horribly under the whip of their slave masters.

D. So baby Moses entered a world of cruelty and pain, slavery and despair.

1. His life began during the darkest days in the history of the Hebrew people to that point.

2. Nevertheless, normal life went on for the Jewish people.

3. Men and women married, they cradled young ones, and they tried to carve out a family life in the crucible of oppression.

I. The Story

A. Here in the early verses of Exodus chapter 2, we read of a marriage celebrated under those stressful conditions.

1. The Bible says: 1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. (Ex. 2:1-2)

2. Moses became a great man of faith because his father and mother were people of faith.

3. They were Levites, from that special tribe who would be endowed with Israel’s priestly duties.

4. Hebrews 11 tells us: By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. (Heb. 11:23).

5. Moses’ parents feared the God of heaven more than they feared the king of earth.

6. Out of a deep reverence for God, and an abiding confidence in the living Lord, Moses’ parents protected their newborn son.

B. Though the first few verses of Exodus 2 don’t mention it, Moses was not the firstborn in his family.

1. Moses had an older sister named Miriam, who was not yet a teenager, and an older brother named Aaron, who was three years older than he.

2. So Moses’ parents hid their third child for three months because they saw that he was a special child.

3. The Hebrew word that is translated “no ordinary child” in the NIV, can mean several things.

4. It can mean “well-formed” or “beautiful.”

5. Most parents think that when they look at their own newborns.

6. You might see the ugliest baby you have ever seen, but the parents are going to say, “Isn’t he/she the most beautiful baby you have ever seen?” “Well…that’s a baby!”

C. Perhaps Moses was indeed exceptional.

1. Perhaps God had revealed to them in the depths of their hearts that this boy had a very special destiny.

2. Nevertheless, whatever they may have thought about his birth, they knew immediately that grave danger faced their baby.

3. To keep this child alive, his father and mother would have to risk everything.

4. Had they not carefully hidden him, Pharaoh’s troops would have seized the boy and fed him to the crocodiles as the king had commanded.