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TL;DR:
The story of Moses’ birth and rescue in Exodus 2 reveals the power of parental faith and trust in God’s providence. Moses’ mother risked everything to save her child, placing him in God’s hands when human protection was no longer possible. Her courage and faith laid the foundation for Moses’ eventual leadership and mission.
What can today’s parents learn from the story of Moses and his mother in Exodus 2?
2 1 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?"
8 "Yes, go," she answered. So the girl went and got the baby's mother. 9 Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "I drew him out of the water."
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, "Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?"
14 The man said, "Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid and thought, "What I did must have become known."
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.
Scripture quotation from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Are you preparing a sermon about parents and children? Here is some help in building your message.
While still in college, I sat in a pastor's office and listened as a retired gentleman talked about his wayward children, who were middle-aged adults by then. He was trying to reconcile their sinful lives with the biblical passage that begins, "Train up a child in the way he should go . . ." (Proverbs 22:6).
At the time, I was a young, unmarried ministerial student. I'm afraid I wasn't much help to him as he tried to understand why things had gone wrong with his children.
However, I was convinced then — and am still convinced — that the biblical principles are valid. We parents can trust God to bless our child-rearing efforts in His way and His timing. Our part is to live out our faith and be willing to submit our wills to His.
Consider, for example, the story of Moses as a baby. Exodus 2 gives the account of the birth and early years of this great man of God. It is clear that what he accomplished for God was built on the foundation of a godly mother's faithful love and her willingness to trust her son to the providence of God.
Moses' greatness in history cannot be doubted. He is the prominent character of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). For 40 years, he led the Israelites through the wilderness and gave them the laws God entrusted to him. But none of that would have been possible had Moses' mother not been willing to dare all to try to save his life.
While we were missionaries in Italy, I had the privilege of hearing David Klassen speak. This unassuming Russian preacher spent ten years in communist prisons because of his fervent Christian testimony. Finally, the Soviet government exiled this preacher from his own beloved country.
In a little rented hall in a suburb of Florence, Rev. Klassen related some of his prison experiences. Locked behind steel bars, he was very conscious of the fact that his seven children were forced to study every day in schools that were determined to eliminate religion from Russian life. Rev. Klassen yearned to be there with his children, to help counteract the godless pressures on them to renounce their parents' faith. He could not be with his children, so Rev. Klassen had placed his children, like Moses' parents, in God's care. That day, he told us that they had all become believers.
I still don't have a satisfactory answer for that American father trying to make sense of Proverbs 22:6. But I am fully convinced that the story of Moses, the Klassen family's story, and the stories of countless other families demonstrate that Christian parents can entrust their children to God’s loving care, even when they cannot foresee or control the outcome. Moses' mother did not know what God had in mind for her son. But a mother’s love prompted her to act to save her infant son. Ultimately, she had to leave him in the Lord's hands.
We don’t know what God has in mind for our children. But we can rest assured that faithfully guiding them toward Christ is worth the sacrifices that may be required.
I wrote this devotional blog post while Barbara and I were serving as missionaries in Italy. It originally appeared in The Standard, a weekly Faith Connections take-home curriculum piece for adult Sunday school classes published by the Church of the Nazarene.
M — Mighty leader chosen by God
O — Obedient to God's commands
S — Shepherd of Israel through the wilderness
E — Endured trials with faith and patience
S — Spoke with God face to face
Like acrostics? Here are more of them.
Exodus 2:1–15 tells the story of Moses' infancy and early life, including his rescue from the Nile River by Pharaoh's daughter and his eventual flight from Egypt after killing an Egyptian overseer who was mistreating an Israelite. Here are six lessons for us from this passage: