Exodus 2:1-10
Tonight’s story looks at the birth of one of the greatest leaders recorded in the Old Testament, and a patriarch in the story of the Jewish and Christian faith. Tonight’s story is that of the birth of Moses
Ironically, Moses is not the main focus of tonight’s story. Rather, the main characters are the three women who were responsible for Moses’ life. These three women who names are not even mentioned in our story,
were ultimately responsible for the salvation of Moses’s life, and the liberation of the Jews from the tyranny and oppression of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
We hear this evening of a woman who commits a courageous and daring act in the face of oppression at its worst, for the sake of the life of her child.
In the 1st chapter of Exodus we discover that the current king of Egypt enslaved the Hebrew people. The king was afraid - there was so many of them and he feared they would take over the country.
So he enslaved them and forced them into hard and oppressive labor. Furthermore, in order to decrease their numbers, he ordered the midwives who delivered their babies to kill every boy child that was born, but the female children were permitted to live. However, the midwifes lied to Pharaoh and let all of the children live. So when that didn’t work, Pharaoh ordered his own people, to throw every Hebrew male child that was born into the Nile River.
It was under these conditions that Moses was born. For three months, his mother managed to hide him. Perhaps she dressed him as a girl, concealed his sex when she cleaned him, or kept him a secret completely. By whatever means, she had been able to hide him for three months, but she could hide him no longer.
The actions of this mother astound me. Can you imagine being pregnant and waiting 9 months to discover the fate of your child. Would it be a boy or a girl?
Last month sometime, I was watching one of those National Geographic type shows that was exploring the life within this remote tribe somewhere in which a medicine man and superstition still played a vital role in tribal life.
When a child was born, certain things must happen, or the child was taken from his or her parents by the elders of the tribe and fed to the crocodiles in a nearby river. This happened to a baby girl of one tribal women because the child’s top teeth came in before her bottom teeth. The mother tried to hide the fact from other members of the tribe until her baby’s bottom teeth could come in, but one day the baby smiled, and one of the other women in the tribe saw the child’s teeth, and reported it to the medicine man.
The elders came and took her baby away. It so devastated this mother, that she now lives in chosen isolation separate from the tribe.
Can you imagine the fear and desperation she must have felt when she discovered her child’s teeth had come in backwards?
Can you imagine how Moses’ mother must have felt when her baby boy was born, and she knew the consequences for him.
Kathleen Norris commented that one thing that amazes her about women is that women are the only beings on this earth who knowingly give birth to creatures they know will one day die.
We give birth to our children, we raise our children, we teach our children, but in the end, each person must choose eternal life or death for themselves.
In our story, Moses’ mother plays the role of creation. In our creation, God gave us life and God saw that we, his creation, were good. In the birth of her son, Moses’ mother saw that he was a fine boy. Death has been determined for her child by Pharaoh, yet she is the giver of life.
Malcom the mathematician in Jurassic Park commented, “Life will find a way.” I would suggest that it is God who has a plan for salvation, rather than life randomly “finding” a way. I would suggest, that it is only because Moses’ mother believed in the promises of God. The promises made to Abraham, his son Issac, and his son Jacob had been passed down from generation to generation. God promised that the Israelites would become a nation of their own. Though their numbers were great, they were not yet independent.
God promised a land of prosperity and wealth, a land of their own.
God promised that these Hebrew people would be his people, and he would be their God.
I believe Moses’ mother had to believe in the fulfillment of those promises in order to do what she did, and I believe those promises are there for us to, and that if we only believe in them ourselves, we too can be empowered to do incredible things in the midst of life filled with turmoil and trouble.
Let me take a little side trip here to extend an invitation. I believe all of us would like to have such faith in who we are as children of God, and have the courage to be bold enough to act as Moses’ mother did. Next Saturday from 9 until 4, Jim Gunnel is going to be leading a group to help participants discover how to tap into such faith, discover God’s call for their lives, and discover the courage to act boldly upon that call.
You are invited to be a part of this workshop, You Can Change The World and you will find more information about it on page 3 of your newsletter. For further information you may also contact Jim Gunnel and I am sure he would be happy to discuss it further with you.
If giving birth and hiding a baby wasn’t courageous enough, what Moses’ mother did next is incredible. When it became evident that she could no longer conceal her son, she weaved a basket of bulrush weeds and covered it with pitch so that it would float and not leak. She placed her son in the basket and placed the basket in the Nile River. The river that had been meant for his death became the means for his salvation.
I find it interesting that the same word used to label this basket is only used one other place in the Bible to identify another vessel of salvation. The word is the same for the ‘Ark’ a man named Noah built, following instruction from God, to save his family and the animals of the earth from death and destruction of a great flood.
Two vessels, both vessels a means of salvation in waters of death and destruction.
Why did Moses’ mother do what she did? Was it an act of desperate hope and faith that somehow God would preserve her child as he floated down the Nile River? Or did she perhaps have a plan?
Later in our story, Moses would be discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter when she came down to the Nile to bathe. Was this a regular occurring event that Moses’ mother knew about? If so, why did Moses’ mother believe that Pharaoh’s daughter would rescue her son when she found him among the reeds along the riverside when she came to bathe?
Our story tells us Pharaoh’s daughter recognized Moses as a Hebrew baby. Surely she knew of her father’s decree to kill the male Hebrew infants. Was it that she had a soft spot in her heart for babies, that she knew who he was and didn’t care? Or was it that she didn’t agree with her father’s prejudice and genocide? Is that why she felt sorry for him when she found him crying in the basket?
And what about the role of Moses’ sister? She watches over the basket as it floats along the shore of the river among the reeds. Either she is very quick and clever, or it was her intention all along to approach Pharaoh’s daughter concerning a nurse maid for the nurture and nourishment of the infant Moses. Was there plan to approach Pharaoh’s daughter? Or did she watch from a distance to see what would happen to Moses without any idea how he might be saved?
We will never know if there was a plan on the part of any of these women to rescue this child. We do know that each one acted in brave and courageous ways, that God has a plan for the salvation of the world, and that through their actions and the waters of the river, this child was saved.
We could take this story to a more allegorical level, with the different people and actions within our story representing other things. In this manner, Moses’ mother, as I mentioned before, represents the creation process. She represents the hope and love God has for us, God’s creation. She represents the desire God has for us to live and be what God has created us to be, created in God’s image, a fine child as Moses was a fine child.
Moses represents the fallen and helpless state we are all born into. Through sin, represented in Pharaoh’s decree of death, we are all destined for death and are utterly helpless to do anything ourselves to change our circumstances.
Moses’ sister represents God’s constant love and devotion that is with us at our most difficult moments. She represents the leading of the Holy Spirit to follow God, to be a part of the family of God. She represents our fellow sisters and brothers in Christ, so to speak, who are concerned for our well-being, and seek to urge us closer to God.
The river Nile, the waters of death that are transformed into the river of life, represent the waters of baptism through which we too pass, and are adopted into the family of God.
Pharaoh’s daughter represents the unconditional love and grace of God, who plucks us from the water of destruction, seeks our nurture and care, knows who we are and what we deserve, and loves us anyway, granting us life in place of death.
Our story is the story of salvation, told through the lives and actions of characters of three women, a baby, and the waters of a river.
Who are you in this story? Where do you see yourself?
Are you perhaps as Moses’ mother? Is there someone in your life whose faith you can give birth to? As parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and adult role models for children and youth in your church family, do you do all you can within your power to give birth to their faith in Christ, to reinforce Jesus’ love for them.
Are you as Moses’s sister? Through your presence do you communicate your desires and hopes to the lives you may touch? If you are given the opportunity to see that someone receives the nurture and nourishment of the love of God, will you act upon that opportunity, and help that person find a home with Christ Jesus?
Maybe you are as Pharaoh’s daughter. Maybe there is someone who needs to receive unconditional love from you. Maybe there is someone who needs to be rescued from chaotic waters. Maybe there is someone who needs to know they matter to God, no matter who they are or what they may have done and you are the person who can share that with them. Maybe there is someone you know, who needs to know they have a home and family here with you, in this church, with Jesus.
Or maybe you are as the infant Moses. Maybe you have been afloat on chaotic waters too long. Maybe you are deserving of death, but want so desperately to live. Maybe tonight you find yourself hopeless and helpless, totally dependant upon the actions of other to save you, desperately in need of a Savior.
Moses was saved and was a part of God’s mighty plan of deliverance. One day, he would lead the Hebrew people up out of slavery in Egypt to freedom and prosperity in the land of God’s promises.
One day, from those people, another child would be born. He would live and teach love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and service. He would die on the cross for our sins, our decree of death, to pay our price. He would rise from the dead to live again, to make us his adopted brothers and sisters in the family of God, to give us a home in heaven with him. Maybe tonight, you are as the infant Moses, in need of a Savior.
Where ever you find yourself in the story, be mindful of you are, be mindful of what you need, and be mindful of what you need to do.
