Monday, May 16, 2016
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.”
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