This is the evening of Mothers’
Day. So tonight, we’re going to look at
the story of a mother, and a father, from the Bible that you might not be all
that familiar with. Tonight, we're going
to look at the story of Jochebed and Amram.
I'm
guessing most of us are not familiar with the names “Jochebed” and
“Amram”. As you may have guessed from
the Bible verses we read today, though, these were the parents of Moses. Jochebed was Moses' mother, and Amram was his
father.
If
you did not catch the names during the Bible reading, that's not your
fault. Their names are not mentioned in
that reading. Amram is referred to only
as “a man of the house of Levi” and Jochebed is referred to simply as “a Levite
woman”. It's only in some lists of
genealogies, one found in Exodus six, one in Numbers twenty-six, and one in
First Chronicles six, that we learn that the name of Moses' father was Amram,
his mother's name was Jochebed, and that they had three children together,
Moses, his brother Aaron, and their sister Miriam.
And
by the way, I did not know all this stuff off the top of my head, either. Before I started working on this sermon
series, I could not have told you what the names of Moses' mother and father
were. I had to look this up just like
you would.
Moses,
of course, became the greatest leader of the nation of Israel. He led Israel out of captivity in Egypt. He stood up to the mighty Pharaoh and
demanded “let my people go”. He talked
directly to God. The Ten Commandments
were given to us by God through Moses.
Lots and lots of Jewish law came through Moses. Moses led Israel to the doorstep of the
Promised Land.
And
because we know all that, it became really easy for Jochebed and Amram to be
forgotten about. What I want you to do
today, though, is try to put yourselves in their place and think about what
they did.
The
nation of Israel had come to Egypt during the time of Joseph. Joseph, of course, was an Israelite who was
sold into slavery in Egypt but eventually worked his way up to become the
number two person in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself. There had been a famine, and so lots of
Israelites had come to Egypt to find food.
Then they stayed and lived there.
And
for a while, that was fine. But then
Pharaoh died. Joseph died. All the people who were around when this had
happened died. And there was a new group
of leaders in Egypt. Those new leaders
looked around and saw all these foreigners living in their country, and they
got scared. They were not sure they
could trust these Israelites. So they
forced them into slavery.
More
time passed. The Israelites kept having
children. There were more and more of
them living in Egypt. And because the
Egyptians had mistreated them, now they were even more scared of them. They did not want all these Israelites living
in their country. On the other hand,
they could not just kick them all out, because they'd come to depend on that
slave labor.
They
felt like they needed to do something to keep the Israelite population from
growing. Since they did not have modern
methods of birth control back then, they did what they thought was the next
best thing. They decided that every male
child born to the Israelites should be killed.
They let the girls live because they figured the girls would not form an
army and take over the country. But the
boys would all be killed.
So
that's what the world was like for Amram and Jochebed. Think of what it would be like to live in
that world. You're a slave, and you're
probably always going to be a slave. If
you have a son, he's going to be killed.
Would you even want to get married in that situation? Would you want to have children at all in
that situation?
Well,
Amram and Jochebed did get married. And
eventually, Jochebed told Amram that they were going to have a baby.
How
do you suppose they felt? Were they
happy to be having a child? I mean, a
part of them probably was, but at the same time, they knew what would happen if
they had a son. We're not told this, but
I bet they prayed. I don't know what
they prayed, but I bet they prayed a lot.
Maybe they prayed that the child would be a girl. Maybe they prayed that, if it was a boy, God
would take care of it somehow. There had
to be all kinds of mixed emotions going on inside them.
The
first child was a girl, Miriam. And
Amram and Jochebed were relieved. A girl
would be allowed to live. Life could go
on for all of them.
Then,
at some point, Jochebed must have told Amram that they were going to have
another child. And they went through the
same emotional roller coaster again. A
part of them was probably happy to have another child. Maybe, in some ways, they even wanted to have
a boy. But they knew what would happen
if they did. So again they waited, and
again they prayed, and again they had all kinds of mixed emotions going on inside
of them.
Eventually,
of course, this child was born, too. And
this time it was a son. How would they
have felt then? I'm sure both Amram and
Jochebed loved their son, but they knew what was going to happen. They hid him as long as they could. Then, finally, Jochebed put Moses in a basket
and put him in the reeds along the banks of the Nile.
And
a miracle happens. It must have felt
like a miracle to Jochebed and Amram, anyway.
Moses is found. And he's not
found by just anyone, he's found by the daughter of the mighty Pharaoh. What's more, she does not send him away to be
killed, which is what they probably expected her to do. Instead, at Miriam's suggestion, she has
Jochebed herself take care of Moses until he gets older, and then brings Moses
into Pharaoh's household as her son.
It
took a lot of faith for Amram and Jochebed to get married in that
situation. It took a lot of faith for
them to have children. They knew what
the law said. And yet, somehow, they
were able to trust God enough to have children.
They trusted that, somehow, if they had a son, God would take care of
that son. And of course, God did take
care of Moses. Not only did Moses live,
he was brought up in Pharaoh's house.
Eventually, with God's help, Moses led Israel out of exile in Egypt and
across the Red Sea into freedom. And it
all started with the faith of Jochebed and Amram. That's a lot of faith.
But
you know, it always takes faith to bring children into the world. We don't live in the world Amram and Jochebed
lived in, but there are still a lot of problems in the world. There are wars going on, and there is the
threat of more wars to come. There's all
kinds of uncertainty about the economy.
We're currently in a drought. There
are drugs and crime. There are lots of
other dangers in the world, too. Things
may not be like they were in Jochebed and Amram's time, but it's still a very
dangerous and difficult world to bring children into.
And
yet, people do. They do all the
time. And I think a lot of it has to do
with faith, the same faith that Amram and Jochebed had. A faith that says that somehow, bringing a
child into this world is the right thing to do.
A faith that says that, somehow, if we have children, God will take care
of those children. A faith that says, if
we have children, who knows what those children might become? With God's help, those children might even go
on to do great things, just like Moses did.
I
think that's what we can learn from this mother and this father, Jochebed and
Amram. That even in a situation that
seems hopeless, we can still have hope.
We can still have hope because of our faith in God. No matter how bad the world looks, there is
always hope that God will make it better.
And there is always hope that God will use us to do it.
So
the next time you start feeling depressed about the situation the world is in,
look at a little kid. Think about what
God may do with that kid. And realize
that as long as God lives, we're never without hope.
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