Exodus chapter 2 and verse 1. And there went a man of the house
of Levi, and took a wife, a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived
and bare a son. And when she saw him, that he
was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could
not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes,
and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child
therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off,
to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh
came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walked
along by the river's side. And when she saw the ark among
the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had
opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the babe wept. And
she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews'
children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's
daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew
women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's
daughter said to her, Go! And the maid went and called
the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto
her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give
thee thy wages. and the woman took the child
and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought
him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses,
and she said, Because I drew him out of the water. Amen. May the Lord be pleased
to bless to us also this reading from his word. Here we have the
account of Moses' birth. So it's a little bit of autobiography. Moses is writing here, he is
the author of Exodus, and he is writing about his own birth
and his own family. Moses was born in Egypt. and he would go on to be a great
man in the purpose and in the plan of God. God would make of
Moses a leader of his people and a prophet to his people. He would make him a deliverer
and he would call him as a lawgiver. But perhaps the greatest honour
that God granted this man, this mere man Moses, this sinful man,
was to make him a very eminent type or a picture of the Lord
Jesus. And as the Lord enables us in
the weeks that lie ahead, we shall no doubt see Moses himself,
Moses in his actions, in his life, in his words and in his
ministry, clearly reveal to us the Lord. Moses revealed the
Lord, just as we were thinking about David understanding much
about the Lord Jesus Christ through the sacrifices and the incense,
Moses revealed the Lord to his own generation and to Old Testament
believers and continues to do so today by the things that he
said and did and by his life. but much of that is for another
day. Today, what I want to just think
about briefly with you is the providence that takes our attention
in the way that God protected and preserved and provided for
this child and his family during this most difficult period in
the lives of the Lord's people. And make no mistake, these were
the Lord's people. Not only because they were in
the direct line of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the children
of Israel, those 12 sons that we've been speaking about so
much recently in the book of Genesis. This was indeed the
family of one of those sons. This is a man and a woman of
the tribe of Levi. So we know that these are the
people of God in the sense that they are heirs of Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob. Levi, in fact, would later become
the priestly tribe. But we know that Moses' mother
and father were themselves men and women of faith. They were
the true children of the promise. They personally trusted in the
Lord. They understood and they trusted
in the Lord Jesus Christ. They believed the promises of
God. We know that because we're told
in Hebrews chapter 11, that great chapter about faith, we're told
in verse 23 this wonderful little fact. By faith, Moses, when he
was born, was hid three months of his parents. And actually,
the book of Acts tells us that he was hid those three months
in his father's house. Because Hebrews tells us, they
saw that he was a proper child, or as we're told here, a goodly
child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. What
commandment was that? Well, remember what we were talking
about last week, how that the Pharaoh of the land, because
he was becoming afraid of the number of the children of Israel,
passed a law, passed a commandment that all the men children were
to be taken and cast into the river. Female children, the girls,
they could be kept alive, but the boys were to be cast into
the river. So there was this attempt to
be rid of the children of Israel in this way. That was the command
that the king had made. But we're told that Moses' parents,
and we know their names, one was Amram, Moses' father was
called Amram, and his mother was called Jochebed. And so Amram
and Jochebed were not afraid of Pharaoh's commandment. Moses
was not their first child. They already had one son called
Aaron, and here also in this account, Moses gives us mention
is made of a daughter that they had called Miriam. Aaron was
born before Pharaoh had decreed that the male Hebrew children
were to be cast into the river and drowned. But this is a wonderful
example of God's goodness. When Moses was born, his mother
must have worried what would become of him, what would happen
to him. But she decided to trust the
Lord. She kept him hidden in her home
for as long as she possibly could. Any longer, may have endangered
her other children, perhaps because the baby was getting stronger
and bigger and would cry out and be heard. Another reason
might be someone suggested that Pharaoh's soldiers perhaps searched
the homes of the Hebrews every three months. in order to find
whether there were any infants there. And so Jochabed's plan
was to place the child in the river in a basket of bulrushes. That was perhaps the papyrus
reeds that grew along the river's edge. She made this little basket
this little ark, watertight, so that it would float and she
placed it carefully amongst the rushes. And Moses' sister, Miriam,
herself just a child, is left to watch over the ark from a
distance. I like the fact that Moses calls
this little cradle, this little box that was made for him, an
ark. God saved Noah in an ark and
he also saved Moses in an ark. One was huge and contained many
animals and these eight people that were preserved in the ark
for a whole year and the other was tiny with room for only one
infant child and that probably for just a day. Both of these
arcs are a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation
and deliverance from danger that believers find by faith in Jesus
Christ. When Pharaoh's daughter came
down to Wash, she saw the ark in the bulrushes and she had
it brought to her. And perhaps this lady had no
children of her own and perhaps she desperately wanted a child. And perhaps Moses just looked
so beautiful that she couldn't resist keeping him. No doubt
the tears that Moses shed helped to make up her mind. Either way,
the Lord stirred her compassion and her pity. and she decided
to preserve the child from death. And I don't know how the conversation
went between her and her maidens there on the side of the river
as they talked about it. Maybe they were trying to get
the baby to stop crying. But it seems as if none of the
servants of the princess could properly serve as a nurse for
the child, who likely needed to be fed with mother's milk. So Miriam, came close and overheard
what was being said and wisely suggested that she go and fetch
a nurse from amongst the Hebrew women. How good our God is! Jochabed got to raise her own
son, got to nurse her own child. Perhaps, probably, until he was
weaned and until he stopped needing his mother's milk anymore. And
she was paid to do so. Doubtless she enjoyed the protection
of the very king who tried to have all the Hebrew baby boys
killed. and Moses became the princess's
own son. He became a prince in Egypt. And by this means, God began
the process of preparing a man who'd one day lead his people
out of captivity. So perhaps the one lesson that
I can leave with you all today is that faith trusts God even
in the darkest of times and when all seems hopeless otherwise. Jochabed and Amram loved their
child and by faith they hid that child. Hebrews tells us that. But when they could no longer
protect him, they could do no more than trust the Lord for
his care. So that's what they did. Faith
is really only meaningful when we get to the end of ourselves. And as Jochebed slipped the ark
containing her son into the river, I'm sure she did so with a heavy
heart, and with an earnest prayer for the Lord's protection. And
we cannot save our children's souls, but we can cover them
with prayers for grace as we commit them into the hand of
the Lord. And if our faith is in Christ,
then he shall be an ark to us. He shall be a protection for
us, as he was to Noah and as he was to Moses. Jochebed cared
for her child as long as she could. Then she thought that
she had lost him, but the Lord brought him back to her. May
we discover the grace of God in the salvation of our souls
and trust him when there is nothing left for us to do. Amen. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us.