A GREAT STORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: THE LOVE THAT KEEPS
(Moses in the Bulrushes)
EXODUS 2:1-10
A mother was putting her little four-year-old daughter to bed for the night. The child was afraid of the dark, and the mother, on this particular occasion, with her husband away, was fearful also.
When the light was out, the child caught a glimpse of the moon outside the window. “Mommy,” she asked, “is the moon God’s light?” “Yes,” the mother said.
Then the child asked, “Will God put out his light and go to sleep?” The mother replied, “No, dear, God never goes to sleep.” Then, out of the simplicity of a child’s faith, the little girls said something which gave reassurance even to her mother: “Well, as long as God is awake, there is no sense both of us staying awake.” And off to sleep she went.1
I wonder if the Hebrews had been feeling that God had fallen asleep on them? Did they perhaps feel that the light of God had been switched off? That God had forgotten them?
You see, life was hard for those Hebrews -- very hard! They were beaten and abused by their Egyptian taskmasters, forced to do back breaking work building Pharaoh’s cities and monuments. They were stripped of their honor, humiliated and scorned, exploited and taken advantage of put down and spat upon. They were nothing but beasts of burden as far as the Egyptians were concerned, animals to be used in the production of their labors, And if one of them died under the agony of his burdens, or because of the cruelties of his taskmasters -- it mattered not -- there were plenty more where that one came from.
And yet there was one area in which the Hebrews had abundance -- and that was in having children! In spite of all their hardships, they continued to flourish and multiply -- And Pharaoh was feeling threatened by their numbers. And so, Pharaoh he began the first recorded holocaust in Jewish history. First, he increased their labor, made it more difficult for them, and when that didn’t do any good to slow the growth of the Hebrews, he ordered every boy that was born was to be thrown into the Nile river and drowned.
That was the situation down there in Egypt! How awful it must have been! How terrible beyond comprehension! How much it must have seemed that God had let them down, that God had abandoned them, forgotten them. Are there not times in our lives when it seems that God has forgotten us that life is harder than it ought to be? Oh maybe life isn’t so bad as what the Hebrews had it -- but sometimes it can be bad enough. We know what it is to feel afraid and defeated.
That’s one of the reasons, I am convinced, that this passage of scripture is found in the Bible. It’s not just a history lesson of God’s people. It’s OUR story as well. It’s a story that speaks to us -- because it is a story that embodies the struggles we all experience in life. But not only is it a story of life’s struggles -- it is a story of life’s hope. For just when it seemed the Hebrews could bear up no longer under their burdens, a child is born who is destined to be the deliverer of God’s people.
You see, in the story of Moses, we can see the hand of God working out his loving purposes, watching out for this tiny baby, providing for his personal safety, preparing him for the time of God’s service. When we face our times of difficulty, and think that God has all but forgotten us, we need only turn to this story of Moses in the bulrushes to be reminded that God is still in control, and that there is a love that keeps us.
I.
For one thing, we are reminded that God provides for us in ways we may not at first recognize.
Was it just coincidence, that Pharaoh’s own daughter just happened to come upon the child, and that her heart would go out to the child? Was it just coincidence that Moses’ own mother would be chosen to nurse the child until the child was old enough to be weaned at the age of three or four years of age? Was it just coincidence that by giving the child back to his own mother, that she was able to provide for her child a mother’s love, and a foundation of faith in the God of Israel? And then, later on, was it just coincidence that Moses should be raised in Pharaoh’s house, educated in the ways of Egypt, have access to the very throne of power in Egypt?
No... it was not coincidence. It was the keeping love of God.
In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom tells of tense times in Holland during the time of the German invasion. One night Corrie tossed restlessly in her bed as war planes roared overhead, shattering the blackness with fiery artillery. Hearing her sister downstairs in the kitchen, and unable to sleep, she went downstairs for a cup of tea. She and her sister talked until the night was quiet again and the sound of the fighter planes had died away. Explosions had ripped nearby, but now all was quiet.
Groping through the darkness to her room, Corrie reached out her hand to pat her pillow before lying down. Suddenly she felt something sharp cutting her hand. It was a jagged piece of metal ten inches long -- a piece of shrapnel from an exploded bomb.
Corrie said to her sister, “Betsy, if I had not heard you in the kitchen...” To which her sister replied, “Don’t say it, Corrie! There are no IFs in God’s world. The center of his will is our safety.” 2
Perhaps with eyes of faith you might look back on some experience of your own to see that God was at work providing for your needs. Maybe you did not recognize it at first, but looking at it now you can only say, “It was the hand of God, and I did not know it then!”
II.
Not only do we see that God provides for our needs in ways we may not recognize, we see also that God prevails over evil in ways we cannot imagine.
How it must have seemed that evil had won the day! The Hebrews had been enslaved, forced to do unbearable labor, their children were being slaughtered. It couldn’t get any worse than that. Evil surely must have had the upper hand! And yet in the end it was God, not Pharaoh, who triumphed.
You see, God cannot be kept down for long. That’s what this story in Exodus tells us. God is the God of power and might, and God will always triumph over evil.
One way that God’s will prevails is through transformation of our lives or our situations. God takes our situation into his shaping hands and brings good out of bad.
That’s what God did at the Cross. He took an instrument of torture and death, and transformed it into an instrument of salvation and life.
Do you remember the story of Joseph? Joseph is the reason the Hebrews were in Egypt. Joseph had been sold by his brothers to some slave traders, who took him down to Egypt. But there in Egypt God transformed Joseph’s situation. He rose to a position of power and prominence, and when a famine came across all that region, Joseph stored up grain against the years of famine. When his brothers came looking for food, and found their long lost brother in power, they were afraid because of what they had done to him. But instead of taking revenge upon his brothers Joseph welcomed them, and he said to them, “You meant it for my harm, but God intended it for good.”
That is the Keeping Love of God.
You may be asking, “How can God transform sorrow, or cancer, or some other great crisis into good?”
Well, one thing I know, you cannot fully know or appreciate the meaning of joy until you have felt the pain of sorrow. And those who have gone through some great difficulty, are often times more able to help someone else going through that difficulty.
My good friend Dennis died from cancer a year ago last October. He was a man of uncommon courage, and an unfailing faith even in the midst of his illness. In the hospital, he often went room to room encouraging the other patients, cheering them up, offering to listen to them if they wanted to talk. Here was a man in whom God brought about something wonderful even in the midst of something terrible. In Dennis, GOOD triumphed over EVIL.
God prevails over evil through the transformation of our lives and our situation. Another way God prevails over evil is through the faith of his people. The Book of Hebrews tells us: “By faith, Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”
It was faith that gave them the courage to do what needed to be done. You see, they believed in a God who was greater than Pharaoh. They believed in a God whose purposes were more powerful than their problems. They believed in a God who provided for their needs in ways they did not always recognize, and who could prevail over evil in ways they could not imagine.
We can never underestimate the importance our faith plays in the work of God. Moses’ parents did what they needed to do. Then they turned it all over to God and trusted God.
Isn’t that when faith really soars? When we can turn it all over to God? As someone has said, “Faith is idle when circumstances are right. Only when they are adverse is one’s faith in God exercised.”
My friend Norm is a United Methodist pastor. A while back Norm was telling me about one of his parishioners -- Bill. Bill was gravely ill in the hospital, and Norm was visiting with him when the doctor came in, and point-blank told the patient: “Bill... you’re dead! There’s no hope. You’d better get your things in order.” Just that bluntly. No hope. No comfort. No “how are you doing?”
After answering a few questions, the doctor left. Norm said that he and Bill sat there in silence for a few minutes just in shock, trying to take in what the doctor had said. Then Norm turned to Bill and said, “Bill, don’t you think you need now’s a good time to get right with Christ?” And there in that hospital room, Bill turned his life over to Christ. And he turned it all over to God.
The next day Bill was moved to Riverside Hospital in Columbus. A different doctor came in and said, “Bill, we’re not going to give up yet. We’re going to try a different medicine, and a different therapy.”
And with a gleam in his eye, Norm told me, “And you know what? He got better! He was healed! He turned it all over to God, and God healed him!”
Someone has said, “When you have nothing left but God, then for the first time you become aware that God is enough.”
That’s what those Hebrews discovered. And that is what you can discover too. God is enough. He prevails over evil in ways we cannot imagine. He provides for us in ways we may not recognize.
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1 Source Unknown
2 TenBoom, Corrie. The Hiding Place (New York: Bantam Books) pp.66-67
