Special Deliverer
Exodus 2:1-4
http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/SpecialDeliverer.html
Now in bondage as slaves, the people of God need a deliverer. Speaking of delivery, their midwives now have been instructed by Pharaoh to kill all male babies born to the Jews. But they valued life, even to the point of lying about why they did not obey this edict. They continued making ‘special deliveries,’ and one of them was to be a special ‘deliverer’!
But Pharaoh took his edict to an all new level, charging all the Egyptians to report or dispose of all male Jewish babies. Most of God’s people lost all hope. They lost their faith. “Has God forgotten us?”
Like most of us today, believers in God from all points of history have questioned God, and often it is about things He has already told us...if only we studied and believed His Word. He had already said in...
Genesis 15:13-14
13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.
God had even told Abraham it would be his fourth generation. So surely this Word from the Lord was passed down to Isaac and Jacob, and his 12 sons. And now in our text nearly 400 years have passed in Egypt, and God has been silent. Sometimes God is silent, which causes us to have to rely on our faith in His Words to us previously. But His silence often separates the men from the boys, spiritually speaking. Early church father Ignatius said, “He who has heard the Word of God can bear His silences.”
It’s been almost 400 years, so they should be marking their calendars and looking up for their deliverance, but they are looking down in despondence. We today need to see the handwriting on the wall, the signs of the times, and be looking up for our blessed hope...Jesus coming back in the air, not buried in the basement depression we have dug for ourselves!
God’s delays are not denials...He always keeps His promises!
Titus 1:2
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;
Quite a contrast from those who make us promises today. We’re back to our favorite season of life now, no, not spring...I mean election season! Don’t take the promises of man too seriously, and don’t let man’s failed promises keep you from believing in the promises of God!
God promised a deliverer, and that one came as a baby, wrapped in a special delivery basket. It’s the first suggestion in the OT that our deliverer would one day come as a baby as well!
Baby Moses
1. His Preservation.
He was born into the godly family of Amram and Jochebed. My wife and I are so thankful to have been raised in good Christian homes. And we want everyone to have that privilege and not to take it for granted if you do have it. Cherish it and cling to it!
Ill.—5 young men raised in PA graduated from high school and decided to take a trip out west. When they returned, 4 of them were obviously, noticeably in bad shape morally. They had changed, and everyone could see it. Temptations in the west were very different than in PA at that time. But the 5th young man came back stronger and as good as ever. Someone asked him how he maintained so well. He replied, “it’s because of a picture I carried with me the entire time.” “Oh, was it your sweetheart, waiting here at home for you?” “No, it was a mental picture of my last meal at home before leaving.” He went on to describe that breakfast scene with little conversation, because mom and dad were saddened that for the first time family ties would be broken. His dad took the Bible after the meal as he always did. But halfway thru the passage he chose to read a lump formed in his throat and tears blinded his eyes. He handed the Word off to his mother who finished reading. They all joined hands to pray at the end as they always would. Dad began praying, but again, couldn’t make it thru. Mom finished saying, “dear God, thank you that our boy can leave our home chaste and clean and pure...dear God, bring him back as clean and pure as he is today.” The boy added, “That’s the picture I carried with me out west. How could I disappoint my mom and dad who had done so much for me, and more importantly, how could I let down my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
I thank God for godly homes at GBC today that are training their children to be different and to take a stand for Christ.
Someone once said this of the Christian Faith:
• To our forefathers it was an experience.
• To our fathers it was an inheritance.
• To us it is a convenience.
• To our children it is a nuisance.
Praise the Lord for you who are striving to build and maintain Christian homes where the faith is an everyday experience, not a Sunday convenience. Let’s pass it on to our children as an inheritance, yes, but by example let’s show them what it is to live an ‘experience’ with God, full time, 100%, sold out...not playing church or putting on heirs.
Amram and Jochebed would have mixed emotions as they realized they had conceived a child. Would it be a girl or a boy? If it’s a boy, how can we bear to see him thrown to the crocodiles of the Nile?
Still today, just as in the days of Pharaoh, the devil wants to use ways both sinister and systematic to destroy our children. Satan’s guns are aimed at our younglings, from music to movies and tv, to many video games and books, advertising, etc. It’s all designed to snatch them from our arms and throw them to the crocodiles!
v. 2 ‘Goodly child’ means he was healthy...but still he was under sentence of death. What could these parents do other than look to God. And that’s how it is in this world today. God is the only hope for our children...let’s raise them right, by His plan!
This young couple didn’t have a Bible, not even Genesis. This baby Moses would one day be used of God to write the first five books of the Bible, including his own story in Exodus! But it was the oral traditions that this mother would have known, passed down thru the generations. Surely she would have known the story of Noah’s Ark and how those inside were shielded from the certain death outside. And so she built a little ark of her own. She built a shelter for her child from the world.
The balance for us to strike is to get our kids to choose for themselves that though they are in the world, they don’t have to be of the world. But liberalism has crept into the church, and today the notion is that sheltering your kids is a bad thing. “Ah, let them watch what they want on tv, we can’t shelter them from that kind of language or sexual content all their lives...eventually they’re gonna be exposed to it all anyway!” We are making a critical mistake...
Though it is true that someday our children will put on a coat of their own convictions, they will make that coat out of the material that we provide to them. It is so important that we lay down godly principles for them. Don’t contribute to the desensitizing of our children. When we allow ungodliness under our own roofs we are putting our stamp of approval on those things. If we don’t teach them what is right, how will they ever know what is wrong?
We are raising a generation today who doesn’t know how to blush! Sir, ma’am, one of your main jobs God has given you on earth is to shelter your children! And when I say shelter, I don’t mean we give them everything they want, but that we give them everything they NEED!
We are supposed to be training up soldiers for the cross of Christ. Any soldier needs basic training, then specialized training, the right equipment, the proper rations...they learn to obey and follow orders, how to respect authority and abide by regulations. They learn that when they do wrong it leads to pain! Then they are ready to go to war for a great purpose!
[the only sheltering some parents give their kids is shelter FROM pain, never spanking them, always taking their side rather than that of the authority, and not being true to their word, never following thru w/ threats...this is not sheltering a child, it is spoiling a child!]
I’m not suggesting we have militaristic homes...we laugh and cut up and have a blast...but all the while there are goals and challenges always in view, and almost every situation contains a teaching opportunity if you look for it.
Jochebed said I may not be able to keep him from going into the Nile, but I can do my best to protect him from the Nile! Noah was a man who built an ark of safety for his family, and Jochebed was a woman who did the same.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7
6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Get the picture? It’s 24 hours a day. We need to know where they are, who they are with, and what they are doing. I’m not talking about a lock and key dictatorship with zero tolerance and no flexibility. I thank God that my parents gave me a little room fall, and didn’t always catch me. They let me make some mistakes and learn the hard way that they were right all along. We don’t want to stir our kids rebellion to the point they have to go out their window or run away in order to have some freedom, but at the same time we want to equip them w/ the tools and the knowledge they need, bathing it all in prayer so when it comes decision time, they will choose wisely and do right.
We’ll see more about Moses tonite, the preparation of a prophet, which follows up this morning’s point of Moses’ preservation with info. on his education, complication, and isolation.
For now, are you in the ark of safety? Have you met the deliverer?
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pt. 2-
Prophet Prep
Exodus 2:5-25
In part 1 we looked at Baby Moses—
1. His Preservation. [more thoughts]
Moses’ preservation was ultimately in God’s trustworthy hands. Pharaoh’s daughter went to the river to bathe and saw this little ark that Jochebed had built to place him in the Nile, in hopes to spare his life. When this Egyptian girl saw it, the babe began to cry. She is supposed to hate the Hebrews and kill this child, but her heart was touched.
His sister, Miriam is watching from afar and has an idea. “Would you like me to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the child for you?” Jochebed wound up being paid to raise her own child! Actually, once weaned, Moses was presented to this princess as her own son. Pharaoh wanted rid of the Jews, but for his daughter he allowed this exception. I mean, how could one child make a difference?!
God’s providence is always at work, in all things. Pharaoh’s decree of death is no match for the Maker of life! God’s providence is evident in several ways:
• The princess coming to bathe at that exact moment
• The current of the river at that moment
• Her glancing at the ark
• His crying at the moment she opened it—God gave Moses’ cheek a heavenly pinch at that moment!
• Miriam seeing it all and having this idea
God is in control, working all things together for good.
Ill.-- Frederick Nolan is the new name of a Christian who lived in North Africa during a time of persecution. Over the past decade, the Muslims had murdered hundreds of thousands of Christians. Frederick was pursued by soldiers who were hunting him to kill him. He had been running and hiding for days, and one night he realized he was surrounded by the soldiers. He saw a small cave in the side of a hill, and he crawled into it. It was only a shallow depression about six feet deep, so it was not a good hiding place. He could hear the soldiers hunting for him, so he couldn’t risk running out. He feared he would be found and killed, so all he could do was pray. Frederick watched as a large spider began to weave a spider web over the opening. Within an hour, the arachnid had woven a beautiful lacework across the mouth of the cave. Soon after the soldiers arrived looking for him. As they looked toward the shallow cave, Frederick feared for his life. But when the commander of the soldiers saw the spider’s web he said that it would be impossible for their prey to have entered the cave without breaking the spider’s web. So, the soldiers left and Nolan escaped. Later, as he reflected on this event, Frederick Nolan wrote in his journal: “Where God is, a spider’s web is like a wall. Where God is not, a wall is but a spider’s
web.”
Moses’ preservation was miraculous, as is ours!
Tonite let’s continue with...
2. His Education.
Jochebed is now being paid to raise her own child. She’s got a limited amount of time. And we should take what little time we have w/ our children to plant any spiritual seeds we can, and in the end it will pay great dividends to them and us.
Then his Egyptian education began in the courts of Pharaoh. This would have been some of the best education that world had to offer, and from the most advanced civilization to date.
Acts 7:22
And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.
No doubt he would have studied at Heliopolis, the Temple of the Sun, the Harvard of that day. Much learning did not lead them to know God, though. They believed in many gods. They believed man came from a worm that crawled out of the Nile River.
Educate the head w/out changing the heart and all you have is a fool...fooling himself if he thinks he knows anything. Perfect knowledge is found in knowing God!
Hebrews 11:24-27
24 By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; 25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; 26 Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. 27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.
Moses could have had all the world could offer, but his heart said wait a second, my mom and dad live in a slave hut while I enjoy this splendor. They work in the fields all day for nothing, treated like animals.
He turned his back on the world and went with the people of God. I’m sure people thought he was crazy. And if you really sell out for God many will think such of you.
This led to...
3. His Complication.
v. 11-14 His secret was out. He realized that in his own power he couldn’t succeed at burying one Egyptian...but years later God will use this same man to bury the entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea.
He’s got a lot more to learn...it’s time for a desert experience. So many in the Bible had one, and you will too at times, so God can teach you, mold and remake you into something better for His glory!
4. His Isolation.
v. 15 He flees Egypt for Midian, gets married, becomes a shepherd, and there he sits for 40 years. Surely many days he said, Lord, remember me? Where are you?
There was a teaching element and a timing element.
God had much to teach Moses w/ a family and some sheep. He that is faithful in that which is least shall be faithful also in much. It is the seminary of solitude for Moses. Elijah attended, so did John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul. Even Jesus spent 30 years in a carpenter’s shop getting ready for a 3 year ministry.
The timing element:
• For 40 years in Egypt Moses was taught that he was somebody.
• He spent 40 years in the desert learning he was nobody.
• His next 40 years he was a leader of millions, leading them to the Promised Land, realizing that God is the Master of taking nobodies and making them somebodies!
Lessons to remember:
God is never in a hurry, but always keeps His promises.
We should build arks of protection for our children.
God’s providence is always at work.
Be faithful and God will pay your wages.
Education minus God makes one foolish.
Live spiritually by choosing God’s people over the world.
The backside of the desert is God’s schoolhouse, where prophets are prepared!
http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/SpecialDeliverer.html
