The Man With Two Mothers Series

Well, she decides to get a bit creative.

If Pharaoh wanted her child to be thrown into the river… that’s where she’d put him. But not before she had given her boy an edge, an advantage in life.

1. She and her husband build a little boat for him. A basket covered with pitch so it would float.

2. And she places that boat in the bulrushes along the shore of the Nile. She doesn’t put him out in the current where it could be swept downstream. No she puts the basket in a sheltered place… a place where it could be found.

3. And it’s very likely that she scouted around for the best place for him to be found. If he’s to be found… she wants him found by someone who has the power and influence to make sure he isn’t put to death. And the only person with that kind of influence would seem to be Pharaoh’s daughter.

Now, I could be wrong about some of the details… but it makes sense to me.

But no matter whether I’m right or wrong on my speculations Jochebed had done an awful lot of planning to make sure her child survived.

Jochebed did everything she could for her son.

And then there’s Pharaoh’s daughter

Moses’ adoptive mother.

She loves this boy - takes him into her home and makes him her son.

She (like Jochebed) did everything she could for this boy as well.

Acts 7:22 tells us that “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.”

Pharaoh’s daughter wanted Moses to have all the advantages her culture could supply.

She wanted him to more than a common laborer.

She wanted him to be a leader of men/ a ruler of nations.

And she succeeded in building him into a man who was powerful in speech and action.

And so, she did everything in her power to give him an edge - an advantage fitting for the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.

Both of Moses’ mothers loved him so much that they did everything they could think to do to give him every advantage he could have.

But only Jochebed gave Moses the one thing that changed his life.

Pharaoh’s daughter supplied Moses a knowledge of the wisdom of Egypt.

She got him into the best schools

She arranged to find him the best teachers

She had supplied him with the ability to be a man who was powerful in speech and action.

She had supplied him with all the training and education he needed to be a success in this world.

And yet Hebrews 11:24 tells us that the time came when Moses “…refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.”

There was something Pharaoh’s daughter had not supplied him with.

Something was missing from his extensive education in the universities of Egypt

But what could it have been?

What was missing?

(pause…) What was missing was a different kind of knowledge… a knowledge of who God was.

As parents and grandparents and uncles/ aunts we need to realize that even with the most advanced education our society can supply - without God at the center of our children’s lives there will be an emptiness that nothing else can fill.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon looks at all the advantages a man can have in life.

Wealth, and education, and power, and success.