“Drawn From the Water” – Exodus 2:1-10

At the annual family-reunion picnic, a young bride led her husband over to an old woman busily crocheting in a rocker. "Granny," she said, touching the old woman's hand affectionately, "this is my new husband." The woman eyed him critically for a long moment, then asked abruptly, "Do you desire children?" Startled by her bluntness, the young man blushed and stammered, ""Well-uh-yes, I do very much." “Well," she said, looking scornfully at the large tribe gathered around the six picnic tables, "try to control it!" (Colleen Pifer)

Who can ever forget Winston Churchill's immortal words: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills." It sounds exactly like our family vacation. (Robert Orben)

Family! They are a lot of trouble sometimes, aren’t they? Nobody gets on your nerves like family. Nobody can hurt you worse than your family. Nobody can take advantage of you like family. And those are the good families. Bad families are miserable as some of you well know. And being the father or mother in a family is especially hard. Don’t you just wish the people in your family would do what you tell them to do? Why don’t they understand that you know what is best?

I was at the grocery store the other day and saw this little toddler girl having a full-on melt down right there on the floor. Her dad was standing there looking exhausted and looking around like he was looking for somebody. I said, “Are you looking for your wife?” He said, “Nah, she’s at home. I was just hoping to find somebody more adultier than me.”

Family – kids, parents, in-laws, grandparents, uncles and aunts – they are going to be a problem. But they are also our most important and valuable resources in our lives. It’s the same with church families. We as a church spend a lot of time together and that can be wonderful and fulfilling and sometimes y’all get on my last nerve. And I know I get on yours! I know I do! Bless your hearts. It’s hard to have a family. It’s hard to be in a family but I say all the time that I don’t know how some people get through what they are going through without a church family.

Having a family is hard but it’s harder without a family and that is part of the reason that Satan has always tried so hard to do away with the family. He knows the family is God’s idea and it is the building block for all of society and it is the original place for discipleship and Satan hates it and will do anything in his limited power to destroy it.

I believe that effort to destroy the family is ramping up in these last days before Jesus comes back but it is a satanic effort that has been going on since the first family walked this earth. Satan has tried to kill the family since Cain killed Abel and he wants to kill your family as well.

Now, God has a plan for your family and God is sovereign as we saw last week but as we continue to learn who God is through our study of the book of Exodus, we also see that we have to play a part. We have to do what is best for our families and that means always always always being obedient to what God tells us to do.

We learned in our study of Philippians that knowing God better and being obedient to Him is what brings joy. When our families know God and are obedient to Him, our families bring us joy. Living out the plan God has for our lives and for the lives of our family brings great joy.

Turn to the book of Exodus and go on to chapter two. In our effort to know God better, we are looking through Exodus to find His qualities and attributes and we just want to know Him better. We saw last week how the children of Israel got to Egypt. God brought them there in his power and sovereignty and He will get them out of there through His power and sovereignty but he is going to raise up a leader to get them out. That leader is Moses.

But there is a problem. The new pharaoh doesn’t know his history and couldn’t care less how great Joseph was back in the old days. All he knows is there is getting to be way too many Hebrews in his country and he’s afraid they are going to take over and he’s going to lose power. So, he decides to enslave the Hebrews that were there and he decides he better start killing off what Hebrew boys are born to stem this population explosion.

So, he pulls a Joe Biden and makes an executive order that all Hebrew newborn baby boys are to be thrown into the Nile River. And while pharaoh may be the sovereign leader of Egypt, he is about to find out that God is sovereign over everything. Let’s pick it up in Exodus 2:1-10.

Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3But 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. 4His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5Then 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. 6She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said. 7Then 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. 9Pharaoh'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. 10When 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."

I remember reading this as a little kid and thinking, “Now, what a minute! Mom puts him in the water. Then the princess finds him and then gives him back to mom AND pays her! That’s crazy! Way to go God!” Even as a kid, I could see that God was working all this out like only He could.

Can you imagine the fear that the Hebrew families lived in trying to keep their baby boys quiet? You know how difficult that is? How terrifying to know that if someone heard your little boy cry, they could rip him from your arms and go throw him into the Nile River! One pastor said about v. 22: “Here there is a full-scale assault on the covenant people of God.”

But it wasn’t just a “full-scale assault on the covenant people of God.” It was and still is a full-scale assault against the family. It started in the Garden of Eden, continued here with Pharaoh, and is raging even fiercer today. Pharaoh wasn’t just trying to weaken the Israelites as a military threat. He hoped that this horrible decree would weaken their faith in God and their commitment to Him. And Satan wants to do the same thing to us – attack our families and weaken our faith in and commitment to God. (Jon Daniels)

Do you remember watching Scooby Doo back in the day and the Scooby Doo gang would catch the bad guy? They would then say all the stuff that would have happened if they had not caught him and the bad guy would say, “Yea, and I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for these pesky kids!” You remember that?

I feel like Satan said something similar when Moses was found safe. “I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for that pesky family of Moses!” I want you to think about what his mother did for Moses. In placing him in that basket, she worked out a God-given and God-honoring plan for her child. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fair. It required a lot of work and a lot of faith. Sound familiar moms?

She saw what was happening in her world and with God-given wisdom made a plan and worked the plan. She built a little basket because I doubt the Egyptian Walmart sold them. She knew where the princess would go to bathe and when. She placed the little ark right where it would easily be found. And then she had her little daughter just go hang around all nonchalant like and wait to see what happened.

That took great faith to be able to do all of that. It takes faith to just do what God tells you to do and believe that God’s plan will be fulfilled and will be to our benefit and to His glory. That mama had faith. In Hebrews 11:25 it says, “By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”

Now, maybe you just have an ordinary child. You know, one you don’t really care all that much about. You can take him or leave him. He’s just ordinary. No big deal. You don’t have to be too concerned about that kid. 😊 But if your child is “no ordinary child” like Moses; if your child is no ordinary child made in God’s image; no ordinary child loved by God and who was died for by Jesus and loved by you then maybe you need to take some biblical lessons from Moses’ mom.

Everything about this situation drives Satan crazy. Notice first that Moses had one mother and one father. That in itself is sexist, racist, bigoted and anti all the lgbtq letters they can come up with and the world, inspired by Satan, wants to get rid of that kind of thinking that God designed, created and said, “That is very good.”

Notice that the father and the mother were married. Also outdated and harmful if you ask the world today. Let me ask you a question. When you buy a car, do you take it for a test drive? Of course you do. It just makes sense, right? You want to know if you and this car are going to be compatible. How does it run? Does everything on it work? How does it handle?

Well, if it makes sense with a car, it ought to make sense with a woman, right? No! There is a big difference between driving a car and living with a woman. And there are all kinds of jokes you can make right here but I won’t. Ok, just two. At least cars come with an owner’s manual. And at least you can control a car. But they are not meant to be taken for a test drive!

1 Corinthians 7:2 says, “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” Sex before marriage or outside of marriage is sexual immorality and there are dozens of places in scripture that make it clear that is sinful and that relationship will not be blessed by God.

But perhaps the most impressive thing Moses’ mother did was to have the faith that God would protect and provide. She did the best she could with the basket and I’m sure that was a lot of work, placed him in the best spot, kissed him goodbye and waited on God. Mamas, that’s all you can do sometimes.

Ephesians 6:4 says, to bring up your child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. That is not going to happen at their public school. The public school is not your child’s friend anymore and will indoctrinate them into everything worldly as soon as possible so be aware of what is going on there and get them into Christian school if at all possible. And I know that’s not easy.

But bringing your child up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord is your job, nobody else. You have to train them and bring them up in the way they should go as it says in Proverbs 22:6 and they will not depart from it. And all of that is hard and it’s not fair but it is what you are called to do as a parent and sometimes even as a grandparent.

But at some point, you have to let them go. Hopefully it’s not at three months old like Moses’ mom had to do but even if it is, you have to know God. You have to know that He is sovereign. He doesn’t ask your permission before He does anything. He is sovereign but He is also good! Look at what comes of Moses and his life. God had a plan for him all along and God could have allowed Moses to be raised in any way, in any generation, in any country but God chose then and there for a reason and we will see that reason in the coming weeks.

But lastly, look at how God uses the family of Moses. Like I said, God could have had Moses raised by any family anywhere but God could also have had Moses raised by wolves or raised by nobody at all. God could have used baby Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt if He wanted to. But God chose to use the family of Moses. Why?

Why them? Psalm 127 says children are a gift from the Lord. I know. I know. They don’t always feel like a gift but they are and God gave you those gifts for the same reason He gave Moses to his mother. God loves you and wants to bless you.

Make no mistake, God doesn’t need your help to get His will accomplished. But He allows us to be part of His plan so that He can bless us. Think about all the great miracles God did in the Bible. Some of them He did completely by Himself with man playing no part. He spoke the universe into existence for instance. But so many times God used men and women to accomplish His will. Even stories like parting the Red Sea, He allowed Moses to play a part. All he had to do was lift up his hands but God used him and blessed him.

God could have had Jesus just show up to earth as a full-grown man like He did with the angels sometimes but He used Mary and Joseph and their family to bring about His greatest work. God doesn’t need your help to accomplish His will but He allows us to be in certain circumstances through His sovereign power to be able to use us so He can bless us.

So many times those circumstances are difficult and painful circumstances too. So many times God allows us to go through difficult times so He can use us to help somebody else and we get blessed for doing it. Sometimes it’s even in this life that we are blessed but we will always be blessed for eternity. And all we have to do is always always always be obedient to what God tells us to do.

It’s hard work raising kids. The world wants to kill them or at least pervert them. The internet is just waiting for them. Schools and colleges are waiting like hungry wolves to destroy them. The TV will ruin them if you let it. I know letting them watch videos is easier than trying to teach them something but they are learning every second of every day and you have to be the one to teach them.

Deuteronomy 6:7 says, “Repeat [God’s commands] again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.”

Your child is no ordinary child. But it’s going to take a lot of work from you and while all-powerful and sovereign God could make that child to be whatever He wants that kid to be, He has put you in this position as a parent or a grandparent for such a time as this, as Mordecai would say. (Esther 4:14) And He is using you so He can bless you because He loves you.

I don’t know how people get through this life with no church family. We aren’t perfect. We love each other and want to help each other but sometimes we – I – make mistakes and even make things worse. But we’re family, God’s family and so we ask for and give forgiveness and move on, growing in the Lord.

Do you have that? If today you don’t have a church family, this would be a good day to join us. We don’t have any rules and a bunch of us are downright hoodlums but we love each other and care for each other. All we ask is for you to be a true believer and follower of Jesus.

Ask God today for forgiveness of all your many sins and then repent or turn away from those sins and that lifestyle. Allow Him to come into your life and change you from the inside out. Do it right now as the music plays.