Faith of Our Parents

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on May 12, 2024.  The Bible verses used are Exodus 1:5--2:10.

            I hope everyone has a very happy Mother’s Day.  Today, we’re going to look at a mother–and a father–who you may not be terribly familiar with, but who are incredibly important in Biblical history.  We're going to look at the story of Jochebed and Amram.

            And if your response was “Who?”, you’re probably not alone.  There are probably not a lot of people who are 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, 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.  Because what they did showed great courage and great faith in God.

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 took some pretty drastic action. 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 suspect they prayed. I don't know what they prayed, but I think they probably 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 him 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 are all kinds of protests and all kinds of violence in our society. There's all kinds of uncertainty about the economy.  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.  

And if they don’t, they may do great things in a small way.  They may make their communities better.  They may lead people to Christ.  They may have a positive influence on people that lasts for generations.  They may do something that leads to something else, which leads to something else, which leads to many, many people coming to know Jesus as the Savior.  If we have children, with God’s help, anything is possible.

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, and our children, to do it.  If we do nothing, nothing will change.  But if we put our faith and hope and trust in God, and we follow God’s will, things can change.  And they can change for the better.  That’s the hope our faith in God gives us.

So the next time you start feeling depressed about the situation the world is in, look at a little child. Think about what God may do with that child. And realize that as long as God lives, we're never without hope.