What would you do if the
government ordered you to kill your child?
For most of us, that’s too horrible to even think about. How could you ever do that? I mean, it’s a terrible thing when a child
dies in an accident or from a disease or something. To be ordered by the government to
deliberately and intentionally kill your own child? I don’t know that any of us can even imagine
it.
But that was the situation in our Bible reading for
today. And it was a woman who listened
to faith, rather than to reason, who changed the course of history.
Our sermon series “Let’s Go to the River” returns to the Nile
River this week. You may remember that
last week we talked about the Pharaoh of Egypt, who had a dream about the Nile
River, and we talked about Joseph, a Hebrew man. God directed a series of events that led to
Joseph being put in charge of all the affairs of Egypt, which allowed him to
save not only his family but the nation of Israel from a famine.
But now, as you heard in our Bible reading, Joseph is
dead. And the Egyptians are getting
pretty worried about all these Israelites who are in their country. And as a side note, it kind of goes to show,
as we read in Ecclesiastes, that there’s nothing new under the sun. We’re talking about immigration as a problem
now, and they were talking about it back in Old Testament times, too. As the saying goes, everything old is new
again.
The thing is, though, that the king of Egypt takes a
pretty drastic step. He declares that
all Hebrew boys should be thrown into the Nile River. The girls can live, but not the boys. The thinking behind that was that the boys
might grow up to be warriors and be a threat, where the girls would not. I don’t know if that was real smart thinking
there, but that’s what the thinking was.
Think about that.
You’re a young person living in Egypt.
You decide to get married. You
want to have children. But—what if the
child is a boy? What do you do? Do you throw the child—your own son—into the
river? Do you disobey the king, risking
the life of your spouse, of your son, and risking your own life as well? What an incredible, horrible choice that
would be.
That’s the choice Moses’ mother had to make. Her name, by the way, was Jochebed. That’s not given here, but it shows up in
other places in the Bible. Jochebed and
her husband, Amram, have a son. He’s
described as “a fine child”. And so,
Jochebed decides to defy the government.
She hides the child for three months.
But of course, you can’t hide a child forever. Children get bigger. Babies grow up. And after three months, Jochebed decides that
what she’s doing is no longer feasible.
But she’s not about to just give up.
She makes a waterproof basket and has her daughter, named Miriam, watch
to see what would happen.
As you heard, something did happen, and we’ll talk about
that in a minute. But let’s just stop
here and think about what Jochebed did.
She hid Moses for three months.
She knew that at any time the government might find him. They might come and take him and kill him. They might kill her, too. It took a lot of courage to defy the
government like that.
And then there’s
the faith Jochebed showed. To take Moses
and put him in this basket, not knowing what will happen, but confident that
something would happen, and that it would be something good. I mean, why else leave Miriam there to keep
watch? If Jochebed had thought that
nobody would find Moses, or that the Egyptians would find him and kill him, she
certainly would not have left Moses’ sister there to see it. Leaving her daughter Miriam there to watch
showed that Jochebed had faith that somehow, in some way, something good was
going to happen, and she wanted to know what it would be.
That took
tremendous faith. There was no reason to
think something good was going to happen.
Jochebed was not given any message from God that this was what she would
do. She was not told that her child was
going to be someone special. There was
no real reason to think Moses would be found.
And if Moses was found, there was no reason to think he’d be saved. Obviously, no Hebrew could take him in
safely, even if they wanted to. And
there was no reason to think any Egyptian would care about some Hebrew
baby. There was no reason to think what
Jochebed did was going to make the slightest difference. And yet, she did it anyway. She did it, and she trusted that somehow, in
some way, God was going to make something good happen. She had faith that somehow, in some way, God
was going to save her son.
And God
did. Pharaoh’s daughter goes down to the
river and finds Moses. She feels sorry
for this little three-month-old baby.
And that’s pretty remarkable too, when you think about it. After all, it was her father, the Pharaoh,
who had ordered the Hebrew baby boys to be killed. And yet God used the Pharaoh’s daughter, of
all people, to save Moses. That’s a
pretty incredible thing.
But again,
it’s Jochebed’s faith that made the difference.
Because when Pharaoh’s daughter finds this baby and feels sorry for it,
there’s Miriam, Jochebed’s daughter, who Jochebed had planted there. And Miriam says, hey, I have an idea! Why don’t I get one of the Hebrew women to
nurse this baby for you? Pharaoh’s
daughter agrees, and of course Miriam takes Moses right back to his mom,
Jochebed, to take care of him.
We’ll talk
more next week about what Moses did after he grew up. For today, though, I want to keep the focus
on Jochebed. The more I think about it,
the more incredible her faith seems to me.
She was in a
completely hopeless situation. There was
no way she could win. No matter what she
did, no matter which way she turned, there was no way things could turn out
well. She obviously did not consider
killing her child to be an option. But
keeping him was not an option, either.
There was no one she could give him to.
What other option was there?
Abandon him? Just hope someone
would find him and raise him? What were
the odds of that?
Jochebed had
absolutely no good options whatsoever.
She did not even have any mediocre options. Every one of her options led to her son
dying, one way or another. And I don’t
doubt that everyone around her told her that.
As she was hiding Moses, as she was making this basket for him, as she
was taking the basket to the river, I don’t doubt that everyone who knew what
was going on was telling her, come on Jochebed.
Be reasonable. This is never going
to work. You’ve got to face facts. You cannot keep denying reality. Sure, reality stinks, but you still have to
accept it. You’ve got to listen to
reason. You’re a Hebrew woman who’s
given birth to a baby boy. One way or
another, your son is going to die.
That’s just the way it is.
Jochebed
refused to accept it. She refused to
face facts. She refused to listen to
reason. Instead, Jochebed listened to
faith. And faith, her faith in God, was
stronger than reason. Against all odds,
Jochebed’s plan worked. Not only was
Moses saved, but Jochebed was able to raise him during his early years of life.
I don’t
suppose any of us have been in the same position Jochebed was. But I’m sure some of us have been in a
position where there were no good options.
We’ve been in situations where it seemed like, no matter what we did,
things were not going to turn out well. Maybe
you’re in one now. And when we are in
those situations, it seems like there are always people right there to tell us,
look, you don’t have a chance. Be
reasonable. Face the facts. Don’t deny reality. Accept the situation. Listen to reason. You might as well give up. That’s just the way it is.
Now, I’m not
telling you that every time we’re in a tough spot, God’s going to give a golden
ticket to get out of it. You know better
than that. What I am telling you,
though, is not to put limits on what God can do. God is all-powerful. God can do anything God chooses to do. God has plans and purposes that we know
nothing about and that we never will know anything about, at least while we’re
on earth.
And sometimes,
things happen that do defy the odds.
Things happen that no one saw coming.
Things happen that no one can even explain. Diseases go into spontaneous remission. Buildings collapse and no one is killed. A tornado is headed right for a town and then
it goes back up into the clouds. These
things don’t happen all the time. They
don’t even happen a majority of the time.
But they do happen.
So the next
time you’re in a situation where it looks like no matter what you do you cannot
win, think of Jochebed. And consider
whether, this time, it might be better not to listen to reason. Consider whether, this time, it might better
to do what Jochebed did. Consider
whether, this time, instead of listening to reason, you should listen to faith.
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