Mother’s Day Sermon Series

And Pharoah’s daughter? Exodus 2:8: 8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him.10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses,[b] saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

This blows my mind. Imagine casually walking up to Justin Trudeau’s son, Xavier, and asking him to break his father’s most beloved and important law. In a world where everyone thinks Trudeau is going to be killed…not just overthrown but killed…if you do this.

God has chosen Moses to overthrow Pharoah.

God has chosen Moses, and because of Jochebed’s faith, because of Miriam’s faith, when Moses reaches adulthood, Pharoah’s entire army will be drowned.

We know this.

We know this from the bible.

We know this from archaeological evidence presented as early as the 1980’s by Hans Goedicke, then chairman of the department of Near Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University.

He said A tsunami rose up sometime around 1477 BC that swept across the Nile Delta, over Lake Menzaleh, and inundated the plane south of the lake. It initiated at a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean Sea.

God controls everything in Heaven and on Earth.

Except humanity, which has free will.

So we know Israel’s descendants would have survived either way. We know Moses would have crossed the sea, and the Egyptian army would have drowned no matter what. We know from the story of Joseph and his many coloured coat that when God chooses someone, if doesn’t matter who tries to stop the plan. Remember Joseph had been taken away from his parents. He did not have a single sibling on his side. But God worked through him anyway.

It would have been nice, though. If his family would have helped.

Imagine Miriam’s faith in God. Her love for her baby brother that allows her to stand up to Pharoah’s actual daughter and say “what if I just go get his mom?”

“You know, she can nurse him.”

Under the threat of death.

Miracles take a lot of hard work. They don’t just happen. Even after they happen, it takes faith to keep them running. Faith. Hope. Love.

Everything a mother sees in her baby’s eyes when that miraculous little treasure is born. And everything that baby sees in her eyes.

It’s about the future.

It’s about the important and loving, and gracious relationship between parents and our children. That sacred, timeless, and unbreakable bond. Each family is unique. Each child is unique.

Every mother on earth has a different story and a different style, but we all love our babies. Jochebed’s story may not be the exact same as our story. But I know we see ourselves in her.

We know, as mothers, how she felt when she gave birth, don’t we? We know how hard that was.

We know the horror, when she realized her baby was a boy, and that he would be killed.

We know the thrill of looking into our children’s eyes for the first time and feeling that love…maybe the same kind of love that God feels for us.