The Story of Moses
Exodus 1, 2:10
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
2-23-2025
This morning, we begin the study of one of the most epic stories in the Bible - the story of Moses.
On the lists of the greatest people to ever live, Moses is always near the top.
Who do you think of when you hear the name Moses?
Moses, the “servant of God,” the law-giver, the emancipator of Israel.
He was educated in one of the greatest empires on earth. He delivered the people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and then led them to the boundary of the Promised Land.
He is the author of the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah, and is mentioned over 700 times in the Scriptures.
In our study, we will see that Moses was a great man of faith. He wasn’t perfect, but he kept his eyes on God.
He was a man dedicated to prayer.
He was described as the meekest / most humble man on earth. (Numbers 12:3)
And he was a man of tremendous courage who stood up to the most powerful man on earth and said, “Let my people go!”
The person that finished Deuteronomy after Moses died wrote,
“Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt—to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land. For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.” (Duet 34:10-12)
D.L. Moody divides his life into three stages:
“Moses spent 40 years thinking he was somebody; 40 years learning he was nobody, and 40 years discovering what God can do with a nobody”.
Turn with me to Exodus chapter 1.
Prayer.
Background
The book of Genesis ends with the story of Joseph. Because of his father’s favoritism, Joseph was hated by his brothers. They decided to kill him but changed their minds and sold him into slavery.
He served in an Egyptian official’s house until he was unfairly accused of sexual misdeeds and thrown into prison.
Joseph is able to interpret dreams and is brought before the Pharaoh after he had nightmares that he couldn’t understand.
Joseph realized the dreams were about a famine and was made second in command of all Egypt. He set about to save grain for seven years to prepare for the famine and when it came, the Egyptians were the only with food.
Jacob sent his sons to Egypt where they encountered Joseph, although they don’t recognize him.
Joseph finally revealed himself to them and asked Pharaoh if his family can settle in the land of Goshen.
This particular Pharaoh was a shepherd himself so he was predisposed to welcome this group of Jewish shepherds to his land.
The Setting
Egypt is a long country that grew up on both sides of the Nile. They had an abundance of fish and papyrus, with which they made paper.
They had clay to make bricks and mined for copper and gold.
They were well protected with deserts on both the eastern and western borders.
They were a sophisticated society. They kept historical records, excelled at music and art, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and engineering. What do think of most when you think of Egypt? The pyramids. [Ancient Aliens didn’t build those]
They were wealthy but spiritually poor and very pagan. They worshiped a multitude of idols - bulls, cows, birds, snakes and crocodiles.
The People
That brings us to Exodus, which is a continuation of the story of Genesis and covers about 40 years. How do we know this?
Because in the Hebrew, the book actually starts with the word “and.”
"These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.” (Exodus 1:1-5)
Their Prosperity
A tribe of 70 in a nation of millions, living out in the middle of nowhere. Not that big a deal, right?
Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. (Exodus 1:6-7)
At the end of Genesis, there are 70. Now 400 years later, there are somewhere between 2-3 million!
The Problem
This is a problem according to the new Pharaoh.
“Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” (Exodus 1:8-10)
This new king didn’t know the story of how Joseph saved the nation of Egypt from starvation. All he knew was the Israelites posed an internal threat. In the case of a military conflict, they could join the attacking force and then get out of there.
The Solution
The king had a shrewd solution:
“So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.” (Exodus 1:11-14)
The Egyptians enslaved the people of Israel.
When God made a covenant with Abraham, who had no children, He told him to look up at the stars and try to count them:
“Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Genesis 15:5).
Abraham believed what God had spoken. He trusted in His Word.
But God also told Abraham about the future of his people:
“Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.” (Genesis 15:13-14)
In Exodus 1, we see these words coming true.
Look at what it says, “The more they oppressed the people, the more they multiplied and spread.”
Throughout history, we have seen this principle again and again.
In the 1940s, China went through the “cultural revolution,” establishing atheism as the official “religion.” Christians were forced underground and the church exploded in number.
Wherever believers have been persecuted, the church has grow exponentially.
In fact, I know of several pastors who pray specially for persecution to come to the American church. Not the “persecution” we whine about today but real, deadly, persecution.
The church would be strengthened, the cultural Christians would leave the churches, and our ability to be salt and light in this culture would increase dramatically.
The Israelites became slaves. They were political, economic, and social slaves. But most of all, they were in spiritual bondage.
The Pharaoh wore a crown with a snake etched in it. Although he thought he was the most powerful person on earth, he was just a pawn in God’s purposes and plans for these people that He called the “apple of his eye.” (Duet 32:10)
Plan B
Enslaving the Israelites into forced labor did not slow their growth so they came up with a plan b.
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” (Exodus 1:15-16)
By the way, Shiphrah means “beauty” and Puah means “splendor.” They were both beautiful inside and out. They were the supervisors of the midwives.
The king now reveals his diabolical plan. Call it infanticide, genocide, or mass murder. He wouldn’t have flinched at these descriptions.
Remember that there weren’t ultrasounds back then. The Israelite women heard that if they had a boy, he would be killed. The midwife was to drown the baby in the basin that was used for washing. So you know they were praying for little girls.
But the Pharaoh didn’t count on the courage of the midwives:
"The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” (Exodus 1:17-19)
Much has been made about the fact that midwives lied to Pharaoh. It is possible that in some instances the Hebrew women had the babies before they got there. But, in other instances, the midwives saved the baby boys.
Why? Because they feared God more than the Pharaoh.
The apostles were arrested and brought before the leading council of Israel to make it clear that they had to stop telling people about Jesus:
“The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.” (Acts 5:27-28)
How did the apostles reply?
“Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:30-32)
God rewarded the midwives:
“So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. and because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.” (Exodus 1:20)
These midwives were agents of life in a culture of death. If they had to tell a lie to save the children, so be it.
Winston Churchill once said,
"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
Don’t make any mistake about it. This was a war against the Jewish people.
We see that in Plan C:
“Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” (Exodus 1:22)
Now this is naked infanticide. Pharaoh made it clear that something had to be done to stop the growth of these people.
This is the first attack against the existence of the Jewish people but, sadly, it would not be the last.
When Herod heard of a baby King’s birth, what did he do?
“When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.” (Matthew 2:16)
Another leader came to power in the 1930s and said that the problem with Germany, really with the whole world, was this fungus, these subhuman people who must be eradicated for the good of all people.
And six million of these people, Jewish men, women, and children were systematically murdered in what Hitler called, “the Final Solution.”
There are still people alive today with tattoos on their arms that testify to the atrocities committed by people, who by and large, would have called themselves Christians.
On October 7, 2023 the terrorist group Hamas launch an attack on Israel, killing over 1,000 people and taking about 350 people hostage. Hamas stated mission is to wipe Israel off he face of the earth, “from the river to the sea.”
One of the families taken hostage was the Bibas family, Yarden and Shiri and their two sons Ariel and Kfir.
This past week, the bodies of Shiri and the two boys were returned to Israel. Yarden had been held separately from his family and returned alive on February 1.
To add insult to injury, it turned out not to be Shiri’s body at all but an anonymous woman.
Satan is still killing children, simply because they are Jewish.
Just yesterday, a Syrian man stabbed a tourist in the Holocaust Museum in Germany. He said his goal was to “kill Jews.”
3,000 years of persecutions and the Jewish people number around 14 million people today. They are still a people, still speak Hebrew, and, as of 1947, have a homeland.
How do you explain this survival? Only the sustaining hand of God over and against the satanic plot to destroy the people out of which the Messiah would come!
In early February, a deep - sea anglerfish was spotted near the surface of the water near the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa.
This fish lives thousands of feet in the darkness of the ocean depths and they are not sure why it was near the surface. The fish died soon after the video was taken.
You can go on Tik Tok and X and Facebook and watch people weeping over the death of this fish while 73 million children were murdered in the womb worldwide last year. Satan is still killing babies just now it’s a billion dollar business.
I’m thankful for Lisa Watson and her team, which includes Linda Paterosi, that are doing ultrasounds at the Hope Center in Pontiac, ministering to women who are struggling through the choice between life and death.
The Faith of His Parents
“Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 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.” (Exodus 2:1)
We know that this couple was Amram and Jochebed, two Israelites from the priestly tribe of Levi.
They had a daughter named Miriam, about 10 years old, and a son, Aaron, about three years old.
They knew that having a boy meant certain death for the child so they hid him for the first three months of his life.
Remember that Moses wrote this so I find it funny that he describes himself as a “fine child.” Some translations say, “Beautiful or exceptional.”
An old German proverb says, that “Every mother’s child is beautiful.”
The problem with babies is they grow and their lungs get stronger and their cries are harder to conceal.
The Plan
“But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.” (Exodus 2:3-4)
Jochebed had a plan to save her beautiful baby boy. She made a box out of papyrus reeds and covered it in pitch to waterproof it. The word used here is “ark,” the same as used in the story of Noah, just a little smaller.
They knew the current flowed toward Pharaoh’s palace. She placed him in the water and prayed that God would protect and guide the little ark to safety.
Miriam followed the basket down the river, keeping a watch on her baby brother.
“Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it.She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.” (Exodus 2:5-6)
Pharaoh’s daughter was probably not dirty but was participating in a ritual bathing to honor the god of the Nile, Osiris.
She saw the basket and probably heard the cries of an infant. When she opened it, she recognized that it was a Hebrew baby.
The Result
She probably thought that the baby was a gift from Osiris. From the reeds appeared a young girl with a question:
“Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” (Exodus 2:7)
The plan had worked better than they could have imagined. Miriam offered to get a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. What Hebrew woman would that be? The baby’s mom!
“Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 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.” (Exodus 2:8-9)
Not only did Jochebed receive her child back but she will actually get paid to take care of him! But she knew she couldn’t keep him for long.
“When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.” (Exodus 2:10)
We don’t know how old he was when he was taken to the palace and placed in the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter. He was probably less than a year old.
Whatever name Jochebed and Amram had given the child gives way to his name given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter - Moses, which means “drawn out of the water.”
This same Moses would later live up to his name and “draw out” the Israelites from Egypt. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
What can we learn?
* Providence
Remember that providence is God “seeing to” events that will ultimately lead to His will being fulfilled. Many times, He does this through natural circumstances. There are no amazing miracles in the story of Moses’ birth, but we can see God’s hand in every detail of the story.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism question 18 reads,
“What are the works of providence?
“God’s works of providence are His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, ordering them, and all their actions, to His own glory.”
John Piper in his 700 plus page book simply titled, “Providence,” defines it this way:
“The belief that God upholds and governs all things - from galaxies to subatomic particles, from the forces of nature to the movement of nations, from the public plans of politicians to the secret acts of solitary people - all in accord with His eternal, all wise purposes to glorify Himself, yet in such a way that He never sins, nor ever condemn a person unjustly; but that His ordaining and governing is compatible with the moral accountability of all persons created in his image.”
In other words, God can even use our sinful actions to fulfill his purposes. It doesn’t mean He is the author of sin or condones it but can “work all things for good for those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
God used the jealousy and murderous intent of Joseph’s brother’s to make sure that he eventually got to Egypt and saved the nation from famine, including his own family.
When Jacob died, the brothers were afraid that Joseph would punish them for what they did. But Joseph understood the providence of God:
“Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” (Gen 50:19-21)
God used these events to bring the children of Israel into the land, where 70 became 2 million in a matter of four centuries.
Moses shouldn’t have survived. He should have just been a statistic; another baby boy killed simply for being Jewish.
Pharaoh considered himself the most powerful person on earth, a god. But God used him and his evil plan like a pawn for His purposes and glory.
Even Pharaoh’s daughter, who thought the baby was a gift from a pagan god, would be used to seeing that Moses not only survived but thrived in the palace.
God is working behind the scenes. And coincidences are just God’s way of remaining anonymous.
If you are wondering if God has abandoned you, or if He’s not interested in what’s going on in your life, let me assure you that He is working out everything for His glory and our eternal good. He is good and can be trusted.
A.W. Pink wrote a generation ago,
“While it looks like things are out of control, behind the scenes there is a God that has not surrendered His authority.”
In 1990, a little redheaded girl was upset because her visa was not renewed to stay in Thailand. This meant she had to come back to the states. When she came to Atlanta to see her parents, she saw an advertisement in the paper about a job position at a little school in the mountains of North Carolina, called Crossnore. She moved there in 1990.
At the same time, thousands of miles away, a boy named Jeff was born again and started praying about how God could use him in ministry. Reading the paper one day, he saw a job opening at a little Christian school in North Carolina called Crossnore.
He quit graduate school, quit his job, and left his friends for the great adventure of faith. He arrived about three months after the little redheaded girl named Maxine.
No miracles. Just God working through natural means supernaturally to make sure we crossed paths. Looking back, nearly thirty-four years later, it is easy to see the hand of God behind all of those events. But it’s hard to see them in real time.
As John Piper says, “God is always doing 10,000 things in our lives and, at any given time, we may be aware of three of them.”
Jochebed and Amram didn’t know how it was going to work out but they trusted God’s bigger picture.
This morning, what do you need to “cast on the waters?” In what area do you need to trust God to do more than we can ask or imagine for our good and His glory?
If you go back up to verse one, you see the tribe of Judah. Satan tried to stomp out the children of Israel because out of the tribe of Judah would come the Lion who is the Lamb, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
God's plan included you and me. Moses had to be protected because he was a prophet that would point to the Rescuer to come.
Ending Song: All Things
