Let’s begin this morning with the mother of Moses by reading from Exodus chapter 2:1-10.
The first thing I want you to notice is that both the father and mother are Levites. Now we know that the Levites are the priestly line of the people of Israel, and though we don’t typically think of Moses as a Priest, we can keep in mind that he does come from that blood line and of course as we will see, his brother Aaron becomes high Priest later on.
Now last week the midwives were heroes as they stood up against Pharoah, who ordered them to kill the male babies as they were born. Just a little aside, isn’t it interesting that the government even today condones the killing of babies through the legalization of abortion. Maybe it looks like a more humane way of doing it, but the result is the same isn’t it?
Anyway, Pharoah moved to stage two by telling his own people to kill the male babies, so now the Jewish people were stuck and apparently many babies would have been thrown into the Nile River as he ordered.
However, as we saw in the Children’s video last week, Moses’ mother hid Moses under the bed for three months, because she saw that he was a fine child. Now I don’t think that means if he would have been ugly she would have let him be taken. But I think like the mothers of Jesus and John the Baptist and a few others in the Bible, she probably sensed from God that he was a special child that God would use.
That word “fine”, which is translated as many different words in our English Bibles, is a very broadly used word that generally means good or pleasant. But the actual flavour of the word has to do with welfare, in other words the good of others. So somehow she saw that he was going to bring welfare to others.
So she hid him for 3 months, then of course he probably started crawling around a bit and it would have been increasingly difficult to hide him. So in verse three she makes this basket, waterproofs it, puts Moses in it, and launches it from the reeds in a quiet little corner of the Nile River.
Now notice the irony there. Pharoah had ordered all the boys to be thrown in the Nile so they would be drowned. But here Moses mother puts him in the Nile to be saved. Cleverly then we read that she sent his sister (who would just be a child herself) to watch and see what happens. This was wise because no doubt when the baby was found, the people would be looking around to see if the mother was nearby. But a little girl would attract little attention.
So Pharoah’s daughter a princess, is bathing in the river with her entourage, saw the basket and sent one of her slave girls to fetch it. She saw that it was a handsome Hebrew boy and it says she felt sorry for it as she saw Moses crying in the basket. As far as we know this princess was not yet a mother but thankfully she had the gift that God gives to most if not all women, that motherly instinct to love and care for all children.
Most of us guys look at a new born baby, especially if isn’t ours, and we maybe don’t say it but are thinking, especially when we see the contents of that first diaper, that isn’t that cute. And you don’t see many men throwing showers because one of their buddy’s wives had a baby. Maybe they go golfing and smoke a cigar but that’s more because it gives them an excuse to go do something with the boys while the women ooh and ah over the baby.
We might shake the guys hand, have a cigar and then get talking about sports, saying things like “I guess you won’t be doing much golfing anymore huh?” But women can seem to look at any baby and see something that I think most of us men don’t see.
So thankfully it was Pharoah’s daughter and not some guy that found Moses floating in the river. Now I don’t know how old Moses’ sister Miriam was, and we don’t know if her mother told her what to do, but somehow God directed one or both of them to instruct the sister what to say to the princess.
Obviously the princess and her slaves wouldn’t be able to nurse the baby and they didn’t have formula back them, so the sister cleverly asks the princess if she can go get a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for her. A very helpful suggestion from this little girl and the princess agrees, telling her to go do so.
Now again just as the midwives were blessed, not only does Moses mom get to mother her son under the protection of Pharoah’s daughter, it says she also got paid for doing it. When he was older and no longer needed to be nursed, Moses’ mother brought him back and gave him to the princess who named him Moses, which means “drawn out”. This fits with both how he was drawn out of the water and how would draw his people out of Egypt later.
The interesting principle for me here is that Moses mother obviously loved him yet she knew that for his own benefit she had to give him up. She trusted God so much and believed that he was God’s anyway, that she somehow made herself give him up. Imagine mothers, how hard it would be after three months to send your child down the river. Then to get him back and be able to raise him for probably more than another year, nursing him, only to have to give him away again. This must have just eaten her up.
The point is that this mother loved her child so much that she was willing to give him up so that he could survive and have a good life. To me that is the ultimate in sacrifice, something that most mothers are so good at. But as I said it also shows incredible faith in God, and this is long before God modelled this by sacrificing his Son on the cross.
When we dedicate babies, in essence we are consecrating them to God. We are saying God use this child for your service because he is yours. And I believe that if we are serious about that, we and that child will be blessed and used by God.
And we see in the next two chapters that indeed happens. This sacrificing act of Moses mother not only saves Moses, but it eventually saves all of her people from slavery in Egypt. And we don’t even know if she was alive when he returned after spending his 40 years in the wilderness. She probably was gone, never to see her son rescue her people.
Then we read about Moses growing up and killing an Egyptian who was beating one of the Hebrew slaves. He get’s caught for this and because he’s afraid he flees into the wilderness of Midian.
Now let me just stop there and draw a couple parallels between Moses and Jesus. Like Moses, when Jesus was born, an order went out from the king in Jerusalem to kill all boys under 2 years old. And where ironically, did Joseph and Mary take Jesus to protect him? Egypt. So while Egypt represents slavery and oppression, it also represents redemption when people come out of Egypt. Moses and Jesus both come out of Egypt to save their people.
Now as we read the rest of chapter 2 and chapter 3 we see that like Jesus, Moses goes to the wilderness before his ministry begins. For Jesus it was 40 days, for Moses it was 40 years according to the book of Acts. In Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 we hear that Moses was 40 years old when he killed this Egyptian, so after all that time he had been an Egyptian but something inside him still felt for his Hebrew people. 40 years later when he was 80 the burning bush appeared to him and his mission began.
If any of you wonder if it’s ever too late for God to use you, God waited 80 years to use one of the most famous people that ever lived. Yes people lived a bit longer at that time, but Moses was only 120 when he died so for us 80 would probably be equivalent about 50 or 60.
We also see during these chapters that Moses like Jesus, was given the ability to perform miracles, and they were both shepherds. Moses started as a shepherd of sheep then people, and of course Jesus was always a shepherd of people.
Anyhow, God appears to Moses in the burning bush, calls him to rescue his people. Like most people, Moses makes some excuses and asks God to use someone else. Now here is God talking to him in an audible voice from a bush that is burning but not being consumed. Moses didn’t have to wonder who it was. God said he would do many miracles in Egypt and promised to be with Moses, yet he still doubts as we get into chapter 4.
God confirms all this to Moses when he does the miracle with the staff turning it into a snake. Then he makes Moses hand leprous, and heals it again. But notice what the big objection is from Moses. “I don’t want to have to talk”. Isn’t that familiar to you and me. We’re Ok if God does a miracle through us, we’re Ok doing loving things for others, but when it comes to talking about Jesus, that’s where we all get scared. “I’m not a good speaker, I don’t know enough”, and so on.
But in verse 11 of chapter 4 we see God say something with anger. He says Moses, what more do I have to do? Who made your mouth, who makes a person mute or deaf, blind or with sight. It’s me and I will give you the words to say.
This is exactly what Jesus himself tells us in the New Testament, “Don’t worry about how you will defend yourself or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will tell you in that moment what to say”.
That is so profound because in both instances God is saying go and do what I’m telling you to do, and you have to have faith that I will give you the words. What is he saying? You don’t really trust me fully, I can only use people that are willing to go, do you really believe that I will be with you, that my very spirit lives in you? And for most people the answer by our behaviour is, no we don’t. The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
But even here, even though God is angry with Moses, in his grace he concedes, and says your brother Aaron is already on his way to meet you (I knew you would do this) and he will do the talking for you. You will serve as God to him telling him what to say. Wow, what a statement. You get to do the miracles, and hear from me but you don’t have to talk. Wouldn’t we all wish he did that for us?
This is where Jesus differs from Moses. Jesus was willing to say the words that God gave him all the time, and he never lacked trust or made excuses.
Anyway, Moses does return to Egypt with Aaron, but before that we are introduced to another mother, and I want to look at that now in chapter 4 verses 18-27.
During his time in Midian, Moses married the priest’s daughter Zipporah. Now this was not a Jewish priest in this foreign land so they wouldn’t have had the same customs as the Israelites would have. The primary sign of the covenant between God and his people in this day given to Abraham, was circumcision, and according to God this should happen when a male child is 8 days old.
Well Moses has never lived like a Hebrew before, first he lived as an Egyptian, and then as a Midianite. So his son was not circumcised. We must assume Moses himself probably was because he did live with his parents for the first three months, and because they were Levites, it’s very likely Moses was circumcised.
But it says kind of out of the blue in verse 24, that the Lord confronted Moses and sought to put him to death. This is after God tells him to go rescue his people. Now apparently something was happening, that both Zipporah and Moses realized God was coming to kill Moses. The consequence for not circumcising your first born son would be that a person was “cut off” from the covenant. Obviously this would lead to eternal death.
And it would also appear that God was not happy about Moses not circumcising his own son. Apparently Moses and his wife knew this. In order for God to use Moses to rescue his people, he would have to have conformed to all the rituals that allow him and his son to be part of the covenant people. It is baptism today that confirms this covenant.
So right away Zipporah the wife and mother takes immediate action, saving her husband and probably also her son. So for the second time a woman saves Moses’ life. But she appears angry as she throws the foreskin at Moses feet and exclaims twice that “you are a bridegroom of blood to me”.
We don’t know if it was Moses who refused to circumcise his son before, or if he was just lazy. Or maybe Zipporrah asked him not to because that wasn’t her custom. But when it comes right down to it we see another characteristic of a mother and wife. Zipporrah takes immediate action even though it appears she really didn’t want to. To me this is another amazing trait of a wife and mother. When it comes down to the crunch they do whatever they have to do to get things done, especially when their husband and children are not getting it done.
Notice the next time we hear about Zipporrah is in chapter 18 and apparently at some point she and Moses separated and she and her sons went back to live with her father in Midian. Then we never hear about her again and I think it may be because she never became one of God’s people. She had the great qualities that God bestows on mothers but in the end she wasn’t a woman of God. So regardless of how good and loving a mother you are, if you are not God’s woman, you will still be forgotten in eternity.
So that ends this part of the story and I just want to say thank you to all the mother’s here today, for your sacrificial love toward your children. To the mothers to be, may you look to the biblical examples of godly mothers. And to those women who have never been mothers or are unable to be, you still have all those qualities of a woman that make you so special and I pray that God will use you as spiritual mothers and grandmothers to God’s children.
And finally to all of us. May you be grateful for your mother even though she may have had flaws, and even if she didn’t do a great job, here you are today in large part because of her. Thank God for her and that she did the best she could in her situation, with the resources she had. Whether she is living or passed on, forgive her for the things that may have hurt you and ask God to bless her. She is and will always be your mother.
