Exodus 2:1-10: How Two Good Women Saved Moses from the Crocodiles

INTRODUCTION

Some historians say that up until the time of Jesus, Moses was the greatest person who had ever lived in the world. But have you heard of the two women who saved Moses from the crocodiles when he was a baby?

Some of the most important events in time and in eternity have depended on the faithfulness of otherwise unimportant people.

I think of the widow of Zerapath, who, although she was a pagan and not an Israelite, saved Elijah’s life in a time of famine by giving him her last piece of bread.

I think of the little Israelite slave girl who told her pagan mistress about the prophet in Samaria who could heal her husband, the Syrian general Naaman of his leprosy, and how that pagan general became a worshiper of Israel’s God.

I think of the Ebed-Meleck, the Ethiopian, who saved Jeremiah’s life when Jeremiah’s enemies threw him into the cistern and left him there to die.

I think of Joseph of Arimathea who gave up his new tomb for Jesus’ burial. If not for Joseph’s faithful action, Jesus’s body would have been thrown into a common grave and we would not have the story of the empty tomb.

I think of the wife and husband Priscilla and Aquila who worked with St. Paul and risked their necks for him.

I. Sometimes history hinges on one action by someone who otherwise would have been forgotten. Today I want to talk about the two women who saved Moses from the crocodiles and gave us one of the most important men the world has ever known.

A. First, a little background.

Jacob and his twelve sons and one daughter and their families had been welcomed in Egypt during a time of famine in their homeland.

They continued to live there and enjoy the hospitality of the Egyptians for 430 years, until a pharaoh came to the throne who turned against them. He feared that the Hebrews were becoming too numerous and were a threat to the security of his nation.

So Pharaoh made a decree that every boy baby born to the Hebrews must be cast into the Nile River and drowned.

B. Here is the story from Exodus 2:1-10.

Now a man from the house of Levi went and took to wife a daughter of Levi. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.

And when she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch; and she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds at the river’s brink.

And his sister stood at a distance, to know what would be done to him.

Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to fetch it.

When she opened it, she saw the child; and lo, the babe was crying. She took pity on him and said. “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse for the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”

And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.”

So the girl went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away, and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.”

So the woman took the child and nursed him.

And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she named him Moses, for she said, “Because I drew him out of the water.”

II. Now I want to talk about the two heroines of the story—the two women who saved Moses from the crocodiles.

A. The first woman we meet in this story is Moses’ birth mother.

Her name was Jochebed (the name comes from Exodus 6:20).

Jochebed was a woman of faith and courage.

She disobeyed the king’s order and hid her baby.

And when she couldn’t hide him any longer, she used her ingenuity to contrive a way to save him.

She made a little waterproof basket, sealed it with pitch and bitumen. (Pitch and bitumen are names for the black, gunky, crude oil from which nowadays we make gasoline and motor oil.) In this way Jochebed made sure that the little basket wouldn’t leak.

Then she put the child in the basket, and set him among the reeds where she was sure the king’s daughter would find him. I am sure that Jochebed knew the the bathing habits of the princess. She hoped that the beautiful little boy would capture the princess’s heart.

Can you imagine how hard she prayed as she left her precious little baby bobbing up and down in his little basket in the river among the rushes? She prayed that the princess would find him before the crocodiles did.

It must have broken her heart to give her baby up, but it was the only way to save his life.

Moses’s mother was a woman of faith.

B. But there’s another lady in the story as important as Jochebed. We don’t know her name. We only know that she was a princess. She was one of Pharaoh’s daughters.

The pharaoh no doubt had many wives and many daughters—probably dozens. This girl was one of his daughters, a princess, but she wasn’t an important person in Egypt. Her name has not been preserved.

Really the only thing we know about her is that she had a tender heart.

When baby Moses cried, the princess took pity on him. She adopted him and raised him as her own child. She made sure that he received the best education, and in this way she made it possible for him to do his great work in history.

This woman has a special place in history—much more important than her powerful father.

When the great pharaoh died, he was buried with great ceremony in a grand tomb.

We saw the golden mask of the pharaoh Tutankhamen in a museum in Chicago. This was just one of the treasures that was found in that pharaoh’s tomb, and Tutankhamen was an unimportant pharaoh; he died when he was only 19-years old.

This pharaoh who was the princess’s father was a much greater man. This pharaoh was buried with great pomp and ceremony. And now, except for this story, he is forgotten. We don’t even know his name.

But one of his daughters, this tender-hearted princess, will have a place in the hearts of God’s people for ever and ever. 

C. There was also a girl, Miriam, Moses’ older sister, who played a part in this story.

We know that Moses had an older brother Aaron and an older sister Miriam.

It was Miriam who hid beside the riverside to make her plea to the princess that the baby’s mother be employed to nurse the baby Moses.

I am convinced that Moses’ mother had the whole thing planned out. She knew where the princess would come to bathe, and she put her baby where the princess could find him. She also sent Moses’ sister to stay close by so that she could offer her services to nurse the baby.

I am sure also that the princess realized what was going on and went along with it. She knew that she was giving the baby back to his mother to nurse.

III. Now let’s talk about the importance of these women in making Moses the great man of God that he became.

A. In those days, babies were nursed for the first two or three years of their lives. So Moses’ nursing mother Jochebed was his teacher during those first years.

Psychologists say that most of what we learn, we learn during the first few years of life.

Moses’ mother taught her son about love, loyalty, justice, and pity.

She taught him to pray.

We see Moses’ compassion when he rescued the Israelite who was being oppressed by the Egyptian taskmaster.

Sometimes people who are raised to the heights of prestige become more overbearing in their pride than those who were nobly-born. But we read in Numbers 12:3 that “Moses was very humble, more than anyone else on the face of the earth.”

All his life Moses was a compassionate man

He learned that from his mother—and also from the tender-hearted princess who saved his life.

Here’s an example of Moses’s compassion.

When Moses fled Egypt and came to Midian, and as he sat on a well to rest (Exodus 2.15-22), the seven daughters of the priest of Midian came to draw water.

They were accustomed to have to water the flocks of some bullying shepherds before they could water their own.

But Moses drove the shepherds away and drew the water for their flocks himself.

They invited him home, and he married one of those girls.

B. But now I want to talk more about the part Moses’s second mother, the princess, played in his education.

Although the princess raised Moses as her child, she helped him keep in touch with his family, especially his sister Miriam and his brother Aaron.

Pharaoh’s daughter also made sure that Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And we read in Acts 7:22 that he was powerful in words and deeds.

We don’t know this lady’s name, but she was used by God to prepare Moses for his mission in the world.

When the great monuments to the pharaohs—the pyramids, the sphinx, and the gigantic temples have crumbled to dust, the shining deed of this unnamed daughter of Pharaoh will live on in the memories of all of God’s people—past the end of time and to eternity.

I hope to meet her someday and learn the rest of the story.

CONCLUSION

About 700 years ago a rabbi named Sosya, ripe with years and honors, lay dying. His students and disciples asked if he was afraid to die.

“Yes,” he said. “I am afraid to meet my Maker.”

“How can that be? You have lived such an exemplary life. You have led us out of the wilderness of ignorance, like Moses. You have judged between us wisely, like Solomon.”

Sosya replied: “When I meet my Maker, he will not ask, ‘Have you been Moses or Solomon?’ He will ask, ‘Have you been Sosya?’”

God expects of us only those things that he has put it in our reach to do.

But what he has put within our power to do, he expects us to do.

That’s what it means when we say, “Jesus is Lord.”

Think back over your life. What are the things you have done to put your faith to work?

You have guided your children. You were a companion to your husband.

You have served people in your work.

You have supported good causes. You have been faithful to your church.

You have taught Sunday school, sung in the choir, prepared pot luck dinners.

You have visited the sick and encouraged the lonely.

If you lived for Jesus, you affected lives, you have blessed more people than you know.

And your work isn’t over. The fact that you have come to our meeting today tells me that you still take your faith seriously.

I’ve often reminded you of this saying by Mother Teresa:

 “We can do no great things, but we can do little things with great love.”

Here’s another saying to go with it:

“Little things are little things, but faithfulness I little things is something great.”

Psalm 17:15: Are You Satisfied with Jesus?

INTRODUCTION

Are you satisfied with Jesus?

In the family my mother grew up in—six girls and one boy—faith was important to her father and mother. They gave thanks before eating every meal and had Bible reading and prayer together after supper every night except Sunday. On Sunday the Bible reading was before church in the morning. Also on Sunday morning, their father quizzed the children to make sure they knew their Bible verses.

The family went to a church Sunday morning for worship and Sunday school, and on Sunday evening they went back for a “gospel meeting.” The way of salvation was proclaimed at every meeting, along with stories of dramatic conversions. The preachers urged their hearers to “believe in Jesus” for salvation. The preachers also made sure that their hearers knew the fate of those who refused salvation.

But it didn’t take with my mother—or with many of the children of the church. The preachers would approach these young people and say, “Are you saved?”

My mother didn’t know how to answer the question, “Are you saved?” because she had never had an experience that she could call “being saved” or “being born again.”

Mother got into high school, a good girl, following the rules, and faithful in her church attendance, but still waiting and wondering if she would ever “get saved.”

But one week, a visiting preacher named Alexander Marshall came to Kansas City and conducted a week of gospel meetings in the church.

After one of these meetings, Mother was sitting with two of her sisters when Mr. Marshall came to them and sat down beside them and asked her: “Are you satisfied with what God has done for you in Jesus Christ?”

Mother said, “That was all it took for the light to go on!”

Mother marveled that Mr. Marshall hadn’t even used the word “believe.” But she knew the story of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and she realized that she was satisfied with that, and that was all it took for her to know that she was a child of God.

The next day she told her family about her new-found assurance of salvation.

Today I want to talk about a scripture that speaks about satisfaction with God. It is at the end of Psalm 17.

In Psalm 17, the writer cries out to God for deliverance from his adversaries. Whether these are actual people who are tormenting him, or whether they are spiritual enemies that are afflicting his mind, they are real to him, and he begs God for relief. He asks God to hide him under the shadow of his wings.

Then at the end of his psalm, the psalmist lies down at night on his bed to sleep, and tells God—

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

when I awake I shall be satisfied with beholding your likeness.”

It is those words I want to talk about today.

I. The psalmist had had a troubled day. Problems had mounted up and he had become anxious. He was glad to lie down on his bed and think things over.

A. In those days—long before light bulbs—people went to bed when the sun went down. The got up when the sun came up. They spent many more hours in bed than we do.

Bedtime was not only a time for sleeping but also a time for prayer and thinking things through. We read a lot in the Psalms about praying and meditating in bed.

The poet who wrote Psalm 4 gives this advice:

When you are disturbed, do not sin,

ponder it on your beds, and be silent.

The psalmist who wrote Psalm 63 has gone to bed rejoicing in the Lord. His soul is overflowing. He says to the Lord,

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,

and my mouth praises you with joyful lips

when I think of you on my bed

and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

for you have been my help,

and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.

The psalmist who wrote Psalm 6 has gone to bed greatly troubled. He pours out his heart to God. He laments:

I am weary with my moaning;

every night I flood my bed with tears;

I drench my couch with my weeping.

So our psalmist was following a pattern of meditation and prayer as he drifted off to sleep.

B. Sometimes I go to bed troubled.

I bring my troubles to God. I confess my sins.

I talk to myself. I call myself to account. I preach little sermons to myself.

I bring to mind the blessings in my past. I remind myself of God’s promises.

I think about the worst thing that could happen. I compare my troubles to the troubles of other people.

I think about how wonderful Heaven will be.

I go to sleep, and when I wake up, things usually look different.

C. Our psalmist went to bed troubled. But he looked forward to a new day, a day of blessing, so he told the Lord—

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

when I awake I shall be satisfied with beholding your likeness.”

Maybe our psalmist was thinking of going to the Temple in the morning. In the beauty of the Temple worship he was expecting an encounter with God that would fill him with wonder.

Or maybe he was just looking forward to communion with God as he began the new day with prayer.

The ancient believers began each day with prayer and ended each day with prayer—just as we should.

It is good to go to sleep saying your prayers. It is good to wake up and thank God for the new day, to commit yourself to God and ask for help to live well in the day ahead.

You can do that in bed. You can do it first thing after you get up. You can do it both times.

D. The psalmist says, “I shall be satisfied with beholding your likeness.” He doesn’t say how he expects to “see God.”

In the book of Exodus, God told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).

But often the Old Testament believers speak of beholding the face of God. They are not speaking of seeing God with their physical eyes.

They are speaking figuratively of such a sense of God’s presence that they call it “seeing God.”

In the high priest’s prayer in Numbers 6—that we use often as a benediction—the pastor says,

The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

To see the Lord’s face is a metaphorical way of describing the feeling of being in the presence of God—to seeing God with the eyes of our heart and knowing that God is real.

II. But there is another way Christians have prayed this psalm since Jesus has come into our world.

A. Did you know that there is very little in the Old Testament about Heaven as our eternal home?

There are really only two texts in the Old Testament that assure us of a resurrection, although there are several others that can be read in the light of that New Testament truth.

For example, when we say at the end of the 23rd Psalm, “…and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever,” that is a Christian take on the psalm, and that is what it means to us.

But the original Hebrew reads, “…and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord to the length of days.”

The poet who wrote Psalm 23 was thinking in terms of his whole life long, but he spoke more truth than he realized, because, in the light of the revelation of Jesus, he will dwell in the House of the Lord for ever.

B. And since Jesus came to our earth and died and rose again, the words at the end of Psalm 17 have been read in the light of the promise of Resurrection.

What the holy poet wrote in that ancient psalm was far more wonderful than he even suspected—or maybe in the moment of inspiration, as he penned those words—he was groping toward the wonderful truth that Jesus would teach us—that God would be always with him—for ever and ever.

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

when I awake I shall be satisfied,

beholding your likeness.

So we take these words to mean, “When we wake up from the sleep of death into another life, there, we will see Jesus face to face and we will be satisfied.”

The New Testament reminds us that in this life we walk by faith and not by sight, but the time is coming when faith will give way to seeing.

St. John writes, “Dear friends, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

In the last chapter of the last book in the Bible, John tells us of his vision of the New Jerusalem where God will have his throne, “and his servants will worship him; they will see his face…and they will reign for ever and ever.”

Someday we will have such a view of Christ in his glory, that we will be filled with such love and such joy as we cannot imagine here on earth.

CONCLUSION

Are you satisfied with what God has done for you in Jesus?

Are you rejoicing in the promise of resurrection?

Can you believe that when this life has ended and you find yourself in the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, the Paradise of God—that you will actually see the Lord? And you will dwell with him for ever and ever.

Can you imagine the deep-down heart satisfaction you will experience that day in that Land of Eternal Delights?

It won’t be long now for any of us. Let’s turn our minds now and again to what’s ahead and live in faith and expectation. Let’s get ourselves in the mood for that great day.

No one knows what it will be like to see the Lord in his glory—we only know that it will be more wonderful than we can imagine.

People talk about Heaven in terms of a reunion with their loved ones from earth, and that’s okay. We will be there with all God’s children—not only our loved ones but multitudes more.

Heaven will be a community in which we will be united with all whom God loves and all who love God. We will be woven together in perfect love—love for God and love for one another.

Don’t pay much attention to the books by people who say they’ve been to heaven and want to tell you what they saw. Perhaps they saw something wonderful, but what you and I will see on Resurrection Day will be unimaginably better than anything we can imagine or anything we have read in a book. It will be something we could never describe in the language of earth.

We know that our highest hopes and deepest longings will be more than fulfilled.

There will be nothing to disappoint. We will behold our Lord’s face in righteousness. We will be satisfied. We will dwell with him, and we will enter into the joy of the Lord.