I read the true story of a Sunday School for 4-year-olds'.
Most of the children were known to the teacher, but this Sunday a little boy showed up without any identification.
The teacher managed to get his first name, but couldn't find out his last name.
"Brian, what's your daddy's name?" she asked.
"Daddy," he replied.
She tried again, "Brian, what's your mommy's name?"
"Mommy," he answered.
Suddenly she realized exactly how she could get the answer she needed.
"Brian, what does your daddy call your mommy?"
His face lit up. With a grin and a deep voice, he replied, "Hey, Babe."
(Susan Boatright, Savannah, GA. Today's Christian Woman, "Heart to Heart.")
APPLY: Children learn from what they see and what they hear. What this boy learned in his home was that his mother and father loved each other, and that his dad was a playful and confident man.
Children learn from what they see and hear.
And it is what they see and hear that shapes and molds the type of person they become.
(PAUSE)
As I was preparing for today’s sermon something occurred to me. In our story today we find that God had heard the cry of His people and was going to send a “deliverer” and He sends them someone.
Who does He send?
A baby!
Really? A baby?
Yes, in fact God did that several times in Israel’s history.
For example, there was Samson.
In the days of the judges, the people of God had sinned against Him, and so God delivered them into the hands of their enemies - the Philistines. But when they cried out for help, He chose a baby named Samson to be their deliverer.
Then several years later God sent Samuel.
Again, Israel had become subject to the Philistines all over again, because of their sinfulness. But when they cried out for help, God heard their cry, and again He chose a baby to be their deliverer.
Sometime later in Scripture, the people had again fallen into sin and God sent them a prophet named Jeremiah. Jeremiah was chosen to warn God’s people while he was still a baby in his mother’s womb.
God seems to like babies.
But there’s a problem with babies being deliverers… each of these babies had to grow up before God could use them. It would take them 20 or 30 years for them to be useful as deliverers. In Moses’ case it took about 80 years before God made use of him.
Why would God do it that way?
The Bible doesn't tell us.
And God’s not saying why.
But I think I can make a few educated guesses.
1st – I believe God chose to select Moses as a Baby, because He wanted to fully prepare Moses for the task he was to perform.
You see, the role Moses was to play was going to change the course of human history.
• Not only was he to be the deliverer of Israel from their bondage in Egypt, but he was going to end up being the man who would shape who Israel was to become for the next few centuries.
• Additionally, Moses was to be the man who gave them God’s Law, and he then had to explain enforce that Law.
• And, Moses had to be enough of a leader that he could hold together over a million people… people who were often hard to get along with, who were often unruly and rebellious. And he had to lead those people out of their slavery into God’s promised Land.
Not just any man could have done this job.
This was a job for a man who had been trained for it… trained from birth.
Now notice how God did this.
1st He chose a woman He could trust - and a woman who would trust Him - to be Moses’ mother.
Exodus 2:3 tells us “When (his mother) could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.”
Now why would she do that?
Well, because she’d run out of options.
She’d hidden the boy for 3 months… but she was now in danger of being discovered.
So she did the only thing a Godly mother could do… she trusted God.
She could no longer protect her child, so she put him in a basket and placed him the river, totally giving her child over to God’s hands.
And then had his sister Miriam watch to see what would happen.
Then - God had the daughter of Pharaoh - “discover” the child.
This was the daughter of the man who decreed death for the boy children of Israel. And yet, even though Pharaoh’s daughter knew this child was “one of the Hebrews’ children” (Exodus 2:6) she took him as her own --- and raised him in the courts of Egypt.
It was there that God caused Moses to be “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” Acts 7:22
But God ALSO arranged for Moses’ biological mother to raise him.
His natural mother completed Moses education by making him aware that he was a Hebrew… one of God’s chosen people. They may live in the land of Egypt, but they were set apart by Him to a higher calling.
And she would have taught about the God of Israel. She may have only had what we call the book of Genesis, but from the stories in that book, she would have told him of the God they served, and of his power and might… and His love for His people.
You see, like all other babies, Moses learned from what he saw and what he heard. And what he saw and heard was what God wanted him to know.
Both the wisdom of Egypt… and the wisdom of God.
And Moses training went on and on and on for 80 years, until - at last – he was prepared to lead Israel out of slavery and into the freedom of God.
God does the same thing today… with you and me.
Did you know that?
Ephesians 2:10 tells us that YOU “are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
ILLUS: Now there are some people here who may think to themselves “I’m getting to old for God to use.” And I've heard of people in other churches who have said they didn't want to work in the nursery or children’s church anymore because they were too old and they've put in their time already.
Now tell me – how many of you here are under 80 years old?
Almost all of you.
Did you realize God didn't even get started with Moses until he was 80?
And tell me – how many of you here are under 120 years old?
Yeah… that pretty much catches all the rest of you.
Moses didn't give up on serving God until he was dead.
And he was 120 at the time.
When you were born, God had already decided what He’d do with your life, if you turned it over to Him. And God prepared all these things BEFOREHAND – before you decided to become a Christian. From that day until this, He has been training you in the type of ministry He’d like you to do.
ILLUS: Years ago, my brother shared with me that it had bothered him that he had nothing to put on his resume when he first applied for work after leaving College. When he told dad about that… dad just laughed.
Dad said: “Jack, don’t you realize you've been working for me all these years?”
You see, Dad owned a huge trailer park with 100 Mobile Homes. In addition, throughout the summer our place was a vacation spot for 100s of families who brought their campers and tents and enjoyed the beauty of the property and the peace of a quiet beach and lake.
From his childhood, my brother had worked at that park.
He’d mowed and he’d trimmed and he helped lay the cement for trailer patios.
He had to help dad deal with trash, and sewage and water and electric and gas.
And he had to deal with people.
Sometimes he had to deal with very difficult people
And while he was in college he’d even designed some very eye-catching road signs to advertise for dad. They were so attractive that they created a certain jealousy from other businesses in that area.
Jack didn't realize how experienced he’d become.
He had taken his experiences for granted.
Until Dad explained it to him he didn't realize he was better trained to enter the workforce than most of the kids he graduated with.
And God did the same with Moses
And He does the same with us.
He gives us experiences that train us in ways we can’t even begin to understand.
So 1st I believe God chose to start Moses as a Baby because He wanted Moses fully prepared for the task. And 2ndly God chose to do it that’s the kind of material He prefers to work with.
God prefers things that are weak and vulnerable, and cast aside and of little value in this world.
I Corinthians 1:25-29 tells us that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is WEAK in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”
God chooses the weak things of this world to shame the strong.
And - by their very nature - babies are weak and vulnerable.
They have no strength.
No wisdom.
No experience.
They don’t even contribute to society… they just lie there and look cute.
But God sees in every child.
The potential of someone He can use for His purposes.
ILLUS: As some of you may know, a friend of mine died recently.
Her name was Regina.
Her funeral was huge, and it was overwhelming to see the number of people who showed up to honor her.
Before a few months before her death, her church honored her at a special service.
What had she done to merit such praise?
Well, years ago she ran that church’s bus ministry.
They owned a couple of school buses, and she used one of them for ministry.
Her brother drove, and she and a friend would go the children’s homes to get them ready.
And that was harder than you might think.
Regina spent the week getting to know the kids in her small community and talking to them about coming to church on Sunday. Then she’d go around on Saturday and remind them she’d be picking them up the next day.
She drove her brother nuts.
First, she didn't really know the addresses of the children’s homes… she just knew you went down this street, and turned left on that one, and stopped at the blue house. Then she’d go up to the door and knock. And nobody would answer. The kids were still in bed, or were sitting in front of the TV in the their pajamas. Well, she’d get the kids up, go into their bedrooms and get them dressed, and make them breakfast in their kitchens, and then hustle them out to the bus.
And before they left that little community, she had that bus filled… sometimes beyond capacity. THEN they got to church and the children filled the first few pews of the building. And most people were glad to let the kids have that area… because there was an odor that emanated from that section of the building. Many of the kids often hadn't had a bath in a few days, and they smelled.
You see, many of those parents had spent the night out drinking, or doing drugs. The kids often lived in broken and damaged homes where they often had to fend for themselves. And Regina’s brother often worried because of the potential danger of going into those homes to get the kids ready.
But week after week, Regina and her brother faithfully brought all those children to church.
And eventually they even got some of the parents coming to church too.
And lives were changed.
Many of those kids grew up to be Christians and some of them were at the funeral.
BUT, why did Regina do what she did?
Why put all that effort and time trying to reach out to dirty, smelly kids who often came from broken and damaged homes?
Why? Because she saw the potential in young children.
She saw their potential to become children of God… and servants of God.
(PAUSE)
Now, one more thought.
I believe that God chose to send Moses as a baby because Moses was an Old Testament picture of Christ.
In Deuteronomy 18:17-19 the LORD said to Moses:
"I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.”
Most Bible scholars believe that this promise to Moses was a prophecy about the coming of Jesus. Christ was a prophet like unto Moses.
And if you think about it Moses was the perfect image of what Jesus did when He came.
• They were both introduced to us as babies.
• They were both raised in Egypt.
• They both confronted the one who enslaved their people. Moses confronted Pharaoh and Jesus confronted Satan.
• They both were mistreated by those they came to save.
• They both created a covenant with God’s people that gave them freedom.
• And in both cases, they led their people to freedom through water.
In I Corinthians 10:1-2 Paul wrote:
“I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”
Moses led the people out of their slavery through the sea.
And Paul compared this to baptism.
Baptism?
Someone did a chart some time back where they showed how God often used water as the point where people experienced freedom, cleansing and salvation. The chart shows a river flowing downward through the lives of several people in Scripture, and this is what you see:
* With the story of Noah, I Peter 3:21 tells us “Eight were saved by water”
* Exodus 14:30 tells us that when Israel passed thru the Red Sea “they were saved that day”.
* In Joshua 3, when Israel crossed the Jordan River, they passed into the Promised Land.
* In II Kings 5 a leper named Naaman dunked himself 7 times in the Jordan River and his leprous flesh became like a little child’s.
* John 9 tells of the Blind man that Jesus sent to be washed in the pool at Siloam… and he came away being able to see.
* In John 3, Nicodemus was told that to enter heaven a person had to be born of the water and the Spirit.
* In Mark 16:16 Jesus declared that he who believes and is baptized shall be saved.
* AND in Acts 2:38 Peter preached the first sermon of the church, and he told the crowds that they needed to repent and be baptized in order to be forgiven of their sins and receive the Holy Spirit.
In each of these cases, God used water to mark the point at which people’s lives were changed.
Now, did water really cleanse people, free people, and save people in those stories?
No. Of course not.
So what cleansed and freed and saved?
It was the power of God that did that.
But God used water as the place where these people’s lives were changed, so they’d never have to question when their healing, freedom, or salvation occurred. I've heard many cases where people have “prayed for salvation” over and over again, but never felt saved. That’s because they were doing things man’s way, not God’s. God used water over and over again because people could identify with its symbolism in their lives… and baptism would be an event they would never forget.
CLOSE: As Moses led the Israelites thru the waters of the Red Sea to Freedom, so also Jesus leads us through the waters of baptism to salvation.
Moses was the symbol of who Jesus was to be for us.
And foremost amongst those images of Moses was this image of a fragile child.
Why use the image of a child to speak to us?
Hmmm.
ILLUS: The year was 1809.
If there’d been a newscast at that time, the lead line might have been: “The destiny of the world is being shaped on an Austrian battlefield today.” Because in that year, Napoleon was sweeping through Austria and nations across Europe were falling before his might. War was upon the nations of Europe and blood was flowing freely.
The world hung in the balance for those in Europe.
But in that same year – 1809 - in America there was a baby born.
He was born in a rugged cabin in LaRue County, Kentucky.
Does anybody know who that baby was?
That’s right. It was Abraham Lincoln.
The life of that single baby ended up giving freedom to 1000s.
He literally changed the course of human history.
And, to this day he is of our nation’s most beloved presidents.
The birth of a single child can change history.
The birth of a child changed the course of human history for Israel in the days of Moses.
And the birth of Christ changed the course of human history for ALL MANKIND.
Why, though, send a baby?
Because, especially in the case of Jesus Christ, this baby was God in the flesh. God stepping down out of heaven to become like us, and share in our humanity. To understand our difficulties and conflict and hardships.
As Hebrews 4:14-16 tells us that “…since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are— yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
INVITATION
