The Birth Of Moses

Exodus 2:1-10 Frisby on 15th March 2009

I don’t usually speak off cuff (and I have reconstructed my talk to put it on Sermoncentral) – but I feel that God wants me to do so this morning

I want to say this morning clearly that we have a God who intervenes in this world, using ordinary people.

Here we read of simply a Levite man marrying a Levite woman. Scripture doesn’t even record their names

We see in the birth of Moses, the great leader in the Old Testament a prefiguring of some of the events of the great leader of the New Testament Jesus

1. His parents were not the good and the great but simple ordinary people

2. Because Moses’ people were seen as a threat, Pharoah ordered the killing of all Hebrew boys (Ex 1:15,16) and we can compare this with Herod order to kill all the boys under the age of two in Bethlelehem (Mt 2.16-18)

3. Women played a prominent role in his early life

This morning I would like to focus on the three women who focus so prominently in Moses birth and early preservation

1. Moses’ unnamed mother

It must have been really hard for her to give up her little boy.

I wonder what she hoped to achieve by putting him in a basket in the rushes.

Had God spoken to her? – Scripture does not say

There were real dangers for her little boy in the basket

i) That a Crocodile did not come and snap him up when Moses started to cry was a miracle in itself.

ii) There was a real risk that the basket could have overturned but didn’t nd#

iii) That no one would have found him and taken him in

iv) Or some Egyptian would have found him, realised he was a Hebrew(perhaps he was circumcised b. y this time) and would have feared Pharoah and killed Moses

But what happened was that Pharoah’s daughter – the daughter of the enemy - came and had pity.

And in that we see the intervening hand of God. And what’s more, she then gets paid for looking after her own son (Ex 2:9)

I am sure some of you Mums would have liked that!!

2. Pharoah’s daughter

God uses some of the most unlikely people to do his work

Here, under persecution, he gets his man into the heart of the enemy stromghold – Pharoah’s palace

Did she have pity on the “poor little boy”

Did she want to strike a blow against her Father’s unjust edict

We will never know

But it is interesting to reflect that the adage “like father like son” does not always apply. For example is it not ironic that the daughter of the arch-enemy of the Church in the 20th Century in Russia Joseph Stalin became a Christian. God so happily does not visit the sins of the fathers on their offspring.

3. Moses unnamed sister

Was it Miriam – Moses’ sister mentioned later on – or some other sister who we don’t know about.

Whoever it was, she too had an important role to play in the way Moses’ life plyed out

Because it was she who got him back in touch with his roots.

Otherwise Moses may never have known he was an Israelite by birth – something that was important to his future ministry 80 years later

I would like to end by encouraging you old folk. You are never too old to be called by God into ministry

Moses was 80 years old

You are never too young – Samuel was a little boy when God called him

And most of you sit between these extremes!!

This is a chapter about God’s unnamed heroines! You don’t have to have Billy Graham’s gifting and calling to be used by God

Story: On my 10th wedding anniversary we went to a Church in Surrey British Columbia, which was about 4000 (four thousand) strong. I asked the pastor how the church had started and he told me that it was the prayers of two little old ladies in the 1930’s – now in glory- who had prayer that work into being.

So what is God calling YOU to do