Without a doubt, the two midwives in our story – Shiphrah & Puah – were courageous women, defying the Pharaoh’s orders.
They wouldn’t follow his instructions to make sure all the Hebrew boys died at birth.
Consequently, Israel’s population continued to grow, increasing the king’s fear that they would one day overpower the people of Egypt.
When he calls the women to account for the numbers not going down, they tell Pharaoh that they just weren’t able to get there in time to “accidently” cause the boys to die.
But, according to verse 17 of Exodus chapter one, the text says the women were at these births.
They weren’t late getting there.
They didn’t abandon the mothers to go it alone.
In truth, they played a part in helping the boys live!
The fact of the matter is, Shiphrah and Puah lie to Pharaoh! That’s gutsy!
He’s got the power to make their lives miserable.
He could throw them in prison, or even end their lives.
Where in heaven’s name did the women find the courage to disobey the king?
And who all knew about the risk they were taking. Did anyone?
Or was this something they initially kept secret?
Keeping it to themselves would have been lonely, and stressful.
But, we read that God knew of their choice.
God saw what they did and provided for them,
giving them families of their own, so that they would not feel alone. Simply Beautiful! //
Well, at some point, Pharaoh realizes he was tricked by the women.
He can’t leave it there, having been played for a fool, so he now gives the order that all newborn Hebrew boys be thrown into the Nile River, and drowned. //
With this law, things take a significant turn.
Whereas his plan to use the midwives appeared to be both secretive and subversive, the king now steps out of the shadows.
He reveals his true character, his plan to “Make Egypt Great Again” not only on the backs of Hebrew slaves, but also by killing their children.
Pharaoh gambles that flexing his might will reinflate his authority, putting the fear back into people to do as he commands.
But will the Egyptians have the stomach for drowning innocent children? Or will this policy inadvertently start the dominos falling that will ultimately topple the king, a man who acts untouchable, a self proclaimed god? //
The Hebrews can’t be certain how the Egyptians will react to Pharaoh’s order. Will they follow it, or ignore it? I imagine their anxiety must have been through the roof.
Throughout history, we have seen that in times of persecution, people come together in an effort to organize either a plan of escape, and/or a plan of resistance.
Today’s text zooms in close on what one Hebrew family did to save their newest member’s life. But wouldn’t it make sense that there were other families doing the same thing?
Surely those who were pregnant talked with each other, and with those who were already mothers and grandmothers – those who had benefited from Shiphrah and Puah’s defiance of the King’s order.
Surely they must have considered ways to get their children to safety, perhaps smuggled out of the country, or adopted by sympathetic Egyptian neighbors.
Surely there were other families putting together waterproof baskets, giving their sons to the Nile, not to drown them as Pharaoh had ordered, but with a prayer to shine light on his self-centred values and hardened heart. //
Imagine for a moment. What if on any given day there were 10 – 20 – 50 – or even 100 baby boys floating in baskets among the reeds at the edge of Nile River?
Imagine dozens of older sisters keeping watch over these mini “arks” spread out strategically where ordinary Egyptians, not just the royal princess, bathed.
Imagine ten, twenty, fifty, even a hundred babies crying, wanting desperately to be restored to the safety of their mother’s breast.
What descent human being could ignore the sound of so many children crying?
Not only would the vulnerability of these little ones have elicited compassion for the Hebrews, surely it would have also raised the ire of the citizens of Egypt who would start to question whether their king was fit to rule.
But how do you impeach a man who seems untouchable,
who acts like he’s “god”? //
The Bible doesn’t provide us with what all was going on.
Maybe nothing happened like what we just imagined.
What we know for sure is that one mother, Jochebed, chose not let her son be drowned in the river. She would not let him “go quietly into the night.”
Though it will be ever so hard for the baby to suffer this separation, and for its mother not to respond to his crying, the hope is that the conscience of their captors will be pricked, and that they will stand up to the Pharaoh and put an end to this evil edict.
Jochebed is to be commended for her courage and conviction. She joins Shiphrah and Puah in the circle of heroes!!
But…
will Moses – her son – see it that way?
Let’s hold that question as there are two more females to celebrate for their cleverness and courage.
The next one in our text is young Miriam – a girl perhaps no older that 4 or 5 – who keeps an eye on her baby brother, given mom might be too upset to watch should the Princess order the child to be drowned.
When Miriam sees the Princess respond with compassion, she steps up and offers to get a Hebrew mother to nurse and sooth the crying infant. Brilliantly, she knows just the right person – the baby’s mother – her mother!
It’s hard to say how much Miriam was aware of the risks that came with volunteering her mother. It could incriminate her family in this scheme to save her brother’s life.
Everyone could go to jail – everyone could be drowned for disobeying the king.
But Miriam instinctively puts relationships first, as children are wired to do.
Simply Beautiful!! //
Next, we have the Egyptian Princess who also breaks the law, and then some.
I wonder how old she is.
A teenager perhaps?
In addition to having pity on the crying child, we read that she bravely commits to paying Jochebed for her services in nursing Moses – the one “lifted out of the reeds”.
Further, we learn that it is the intention of the Princess to adopt the baby when he is weaned.
These choices by the Princess will result in a Hebrew slave growing up as an equal, right under Pharaoh’s nose – in complete contradiction to his Make-Egypt-Great-Again campaign.
Did she do this intentionally? If so, it’s absolutely brilliant!
Having Moses in the Palace would give her father opportunity after opportunity to see his common humanity with the Hebrews.
Instead of fearing them, perhaps the prayer is that he might be moved to do an about face and seek a “two-state solution,” where Egyptians and Hebrews live peaceably as neighbours and trading partners, in full equality!
Going against her father’s law doesn’t make the Princess pro Israeli and anti Egyptian. It makes her pro human! There is no “us” and “them” – only “us together.”
I wager that in her mind, this “special baby” (Exodus 2:2) could be the means of softening her father’s heart, convicting his conscience, and minimally getting him to rescind this cruel and criminal proclamation.
Maybe that is exactly what happened.
When Moses’ brother Aaron is born one, two, or three years later, there is no mention of hiding him in a basket and placing it among the reeds on the Nile.
Interesting. What changed? //
Jesus tells a couple of parables about amazing outcomes that stem from the tiniest insignificant things….like how, for example, a mustard seed can grow into a large bush, and how a little bit of yeast can leaven a large bowl of dough.
The Princess may have only been concerned about helping one baby boy that day. Maybe she even had it in her mind that adopting Moses might help convince her father to kill an evil law.
But what if she was dreaming bigger – “dreaming to the MAX” as the lottery commercial says.
What if she held out a wild hope that this special baby might even launch a turn about in her father that would end a 400-year long system of apartheid, sparking a vision of greater national strength and prosperity rooted in Egyptians and Israelites being united as equals?
Imagine all of this coming about because a young teenage Princess was brave enough to risk her own life to save a child of enslaved people, hoping it might change her father’s mind.
Makes you wonder what it will take to change minds in the middle east today. How long before men on both sides hear the children crying?
//
Friends, within the first two chapters of Exodus, within 18 verses of scripture, we have a group of FIVE women and girls: Shiphrah, Puah, Jochebed, Miriam, and an Egyptian Princess – all of whom risked their lives for others, Moses included.
I wonder what he thought about their efforts.
You would think he would have been HUGELY GRATEFUL, right?
If we were in Moses’ sandals, wouldn’t you and I be in awe of how much people valued us, and took risks for us, and for the greater good of humanity?
Wouldn’t thankfulness convict our hearts and inspire a calling in us to pay forward that generous risk-taking grace of the women?
Wouldn’t we feel compelled to stand on their shoulders and feed off their confidence and BOLDY LEAD our people out of Egypt into a new life and new land flowing with milk and honey?
You would think that, But…
we don’t see Moses responding in that way.
Instead, a case can be made that he reacts in the opposite, spending the first forty years of his life ignoring his roots as well as the cry of his people.
And when he can’t brush off the reality that he was born a slave, and attempts to do something in solidarity with the Hebrews’ cry for deliverance, it back fires.
He ends up fleeing for his life, running away to the land of Midian.
And ANOTHER FORTY YEARS go by.
Time wasted?
Time spent in hiding? //
Friends, for God, TIME IS NEVER WASTED.
I love these verses from Isaiah 55:8-11 that point to this very truth:
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and
flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 SO IS MY WORD THAT GOES OUT FROM MY MOUTH:
It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
The writer of these words believed that the Lord is at work in the slow and steady “tick talk” of time. Thanks be to God! //
In preparation for last Sunday’s service, Amanda Chathi and Pastor Mark were both led to the same song in our hymnal. It is entitled: “God, Give Me Time” – VT #144.
We sang it in the service last week and pondered the importance of time to work through what’s going on inside us – time spent with the Holy Spirit processing the storyline in our heart that struggles with letting go, forgiving, and moving on.
In our story today, we can be sure, as people of faith, that the Holy Spirit was at work in Moses during those two sets of 40 years, inviting him to walk back and own the bigger issue at the heart of his reluctance. //
Here I am reminded of a movie entitled: “The King’s Speech” released in 2010. Perhaps you remember seeing it. I won several Academy Awards, including “Best Picture.”
It tells the true story of Great Britian’s King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II who passed away a little over a year ago.
George had a severe speech problem. He stammered.
Just to remind you, Moses had something of the same problem.
In the movie, George’s wife introduces him to a self-taught unconventional speech therapist named Lionel Logue.
Lionel helps the soon-to-be crowned Monarch with exercises and techniques to loosen the tongue.
But he also helps “Bertie” (short for Albert – one of George’s many names) connect to a deeply held trauma dating back to his childhood that left him feeling terribly alone.
Bertie shares, perhaps for the first time with anyone, his earliest memory, that being of a nanny who seemingly didn’t like George, and who pinched him to make him cry whenever mommy was around.
The nanny used his crying as an excuse to whisk him away from his mother, depriving him of the little time he could have had with her. How simply awful!
Lionel helps Bertie draw a line between his stuttering and the loss of maternal affection. But what can be done? That was so long ago, and you can’t change the past.
Indeed, fixing the King’s stammering appears hopeless.
Feelings of inferiority chase after George like hounds after a fox in the English countryside, incessantly barking, nipping at his heels.
Yet thanks to the support of his endearing wife and two daughters, there is still a smoldering wick burning within George that hasn’t been extinguished.
In a relatively short amount of time, Lionel is able to fan that spark into flame, igniting George’s courage to express long-buried feelings, helping him begin to name what it is he’s lost and held prisoner by.
We’re drawn in by Logue’s unorthodox mix of grace and directness used to build trust with George, based on the premise that the power of healing needs to come from within the King elect.
Lionel’s approach actually mirrors the healing way of Jesus, namely Christ’s choice to be courageously present to another, helping them find even a tiny bit of capacity to name past hurts, and to ultimately forgive one’s self.
Jesus knew God can’t resist getting involved whenever someone finds even the tiniest bit of courage to own their story. The truth is, God loves to send a blessing, usually in the form of snapping someone’s chain of bondage.
For example, in the gospel of John chapter five, we see Jesus at the pool of Bethesda, speaking with a crippled man who has been an invalid for 38 years.
Embodying both grace and truth, Jesus asks the lame man at the pool of Bethesda this question: “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6).
The man responds,
“I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.
While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
To me it sounds like the man is saying his healing (or lack thereof) is someone else’s fault. He doesn’t want to take responsibility for whatever is holding him back.
To this Jesus responds rather bluntly, telling the man to “Get up!”
In other words, own your feelings of powerlessness and loss, and decide if you really want God’s help or not. It’s time to stop blaming others for your troubles. //
I think it would fare to say that after 38 years of stewing, wrestling with feeling lonely and unloved, this man – thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit in his life – has developed some capacity to look inward and admit that he’s mostly angry with himself.
Indeed, there are times we get mired down thinking we somehow should have been smarter, faster, stronger, in order to sidestep a traumatic thing that happened to us.
That belief is what makes it so difficult to forgive ourselves.
That belief won’t permit us to accept that we are all limited human beings. //
Well, at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus tells the man to Get Up. And he does!
Grace, and owning the truth, set him free.
In the movie (The King’s Speech), Lionel (the speech therapist) basically tells George to do the same thing…to “Get Up” and be the King!
George struggles, but seems to find enough grace to reach back forty years and forgive himself as a toddler, for not being able to find the words (let alone say them) to get what he wanted – namely, his mother’s love.
Here we see it again, this same number, “forty years” – time of Holy Spirit work 😊 //
Okay, time to circle back to Moses and some parting thoughts.
Do you suppose Moses stammered because in childhood he was too young to know the words, let alone say them, to keep his mother from setting him adrift in a basket, leaving him crying, alone and afraid?
Did he stutter because a year or two later he was too young to know the words, let alone say them, to keep his mother from handing him over to the princess, a complete stranger, from a completely different culture and religion?
We know Jochebed did this to save his life, and perhaps also in the hope of a higher purpose she could imagine him fulfilling – namely, the setting free of Israel’s children.
But to a child, Mommy is everything.
Mommy is the only thing.
Moses had to have felt abandoned. He had no say – or more accurately, no ability to say something that might have changed her mind. //
We also know Moses grows up in the palace with a father figure who thinks he’s a god.
Whatever the Pharaoh commands, happens!
It therefore could follow that Moses grows up believing he should be able to do the same thing. He should be able get whatever he wants.
But early in life, at a critical time, he didn’t get what he wanted.
He didn’t get to grow up with his birth family.
Every time he saw the Pharaoh, do you suppose he was reminded of his weakness and limitation, making him feel flawed, not quite a man, alone?
I know that when I am sick, and feeling powerless, I get cranky. Maybe you do too.
We take out our frustrations on family, looking to find fault, and assign blame.
Makes me wonder if Moses blamed his feelings of powerlessness on his mother, his sister, and the princess who took him away from his family.
Friends, the ache of feeling abandoned is painful.
Might it have hurt so bad that Moses at times wished he had been drowned as an infant than to feel rejected by his family?
Perhaps like Job, Moses may also have cursed the day he was born.
Listen to these words from Job chapter 3 – and imagine Moses saying them:
11 “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?
12 Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?
13 For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest… //
23 Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?
24 For sighing has become my daily food; my groans pour out like water.
25 What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.
26 I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” //
It takes Moses time to let the Holy Spirit do Her work in him, gracing him with love, providing him with support and courage to go back and feel those awful feelings.
This time, when he feels them, the difference is that he’s not alone. God is there.
Slowly, his fears of not deserving to feel wanted and loved shrink. //
After working on him for 40 years in Midian,
the Holy Spirit is convinced Moses has enough capacity to see God in a burning bush.
Moses has at least a mustard seed size amount of faith in his self worth to not run away but to feel honored, trusted, loved and valued.
Like the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda, Moses “Get’s up” in front of the burning bush. Moses claims the moment and asks God questions, and even pushes God to see just how deep God’s grace and patience really are.
While it seems God gets a little annoyed, the Lord doesn’t give up on Moses, working with the man, making special accommodations as Moses lists his limitations.
You know, I can’t help but picture God even smiling, delighting that Moses is owning his humanness – no longer thinking he has to be like God – no longer needing to act like his stepfather, the Pharaoh.
With the Holy Spirit, and the help of a supportive wife and father-in-law, Moses comes to love himself, and forgive himself.
The path is cleared to forgive those he blamed for separating him from his family.
Forgiving himself, and forgiving his mother, sister, and the princess may have even helped him see the hand of God working through all the women in today’s story.
Maybe there was a moment in which he gave thanks for the risks they took to give him a chance at life, and this role in setting Israel free.
Let’s close with a prayer.
OVER…. à
Dear God,
You know that each of us are on a journey to find our way home to healing.
Each of us have been hit hard by feelings of abandonment, feelings of being all alone, cut off, crippled, unable to heal our hurts and get up.
Yes, for some of us, it might even be 40 years or more of being stuck.
O Lord, send the Holy Spirit to work intimately in our hearts, praying the words we cannot come up with, let alone say.
Let the testimony of Your Son Jesus penetrate our being – the message he brought that we are indeed loved, remembered, valued, and needed.
Ready us for the opportunity of a lifetime wherein we feel Your presence and hear Your voice calling us to stand up – to believe we are no longer bound by the chains of our weakness and failings.
And may there be a Holy ripple effect stemming from our being forgiven and set free – an explosion of grace that shakes others held in prison, causing shackles to fall off and doors to swing open.
May there be so much kindness and gentle grace that even our jailors are touched and healed.
Make it so that the world would believe there is nothing that can get in between You and humanity being loved.
We pray this in the powerful name of him who made himself powerless – just to convince us of the grace that brings us home.
AMEN, and AMEN