His Amazing Birth and Biggest Mistake

Exodus 2:1-15

As we learned last week, once a new king assumed the throne in Egypt, Joseph and his accomplishments had been forgotten.  The new rulers of the land had no knowledge of why the Hebrews were living in Egypt and he despised these “foreigners.”  In an effort to destroy the Hebrews, he uprooted them from their homes and subjugated them to harsh, forced labor.  The king feared the Hebrews because there were so many of them.  The more he worked them, the more God blessed His people and the more numerous they became.  As if to mock this puny, earthly king, the King of the Universe caused his plans to have the exact opposite effect.

The fact that the king’s first plan failed so miserably caused him to try a second: he commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill all male babies as soon as they were born.  Because the midwives feared God, they would not execute the king’s orders.  When they were questioned by the king about this disloyalty, the midwives explained that Hebrew women were much more “vigorous” than the delicate women of Egypt and that the babies were being born before they could arrive.  God rewarded them, not because they lied to the king or because they were disloyal to the king, but because they feared God and treated the Hebrew women with mercy.

This second failure pushed the Egyptian king over the edge and drove him to even more acts of violence.  This time he commanded all his subjects to throw every Hebrew boy born into the Nile, effectively wiping out an entire race.  Notice 1:12-

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

What started out as jealousy grew into great fear:  the rulers of Egypt feared the Hebrews because no matter what he did to them, they prospered.

And this brings us to the birth of Moses.

1.  He was a fine child, verse 1

Moses was the youngest of three children born to this family.  Aaron, his older brother, was obviously born sometime before the king began the killing of Hebrew boys.  He also had an older sister.

The first thing we notice about baby was that he was “fine.”  There is obviously more than just his physical appearance being stressed here.  Every parent thinks his or her baby is the most beautiful baby ever born.

For some help with this, we turn to Hebrews 11:23-

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.

The first thing this verse makes me want to ask is, If they weren’t afraid of the king’s edict, why were they hiding the child?  The edict was directed at killing the male babies.  The act of faith was hiding the child, and that took a considerable amount of courage.  They saw something in their child that gave them that courage.  Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews 2,2010-16 suggests that Moses’ father had been given a vision by God and told not to despair  because Moses would deliver the Hebrews from their bondage.  This seems to be generally believed among Jews to this day even though there is no Biblical record of it.

The point to take away from the action of Moses’ parents is this:  faith demands action.  We believe the God answers prayers, but we still medicine when we are sick.  We believe God supplies all our needs, but we still have pension plans.  Faith in no way is a denial of reality.  Faith gives you wisdom and courage to do what has to be done.

2.  His privileged upbringing, verses 7-10

Moses was placed in a watertight basket and floated down the Nile.  He was found and “adopted” by none other than the Pharaoh’s daughter!  That is an amazing example of divine providence.  But it gets even better:  the daughter hires Moses’ very own mother to be his nanny!  So we see God’s love in action; by faith Moses’ parents floated him down the river to an uncertain future; their faith was rewarded when Moses was returned to them.  Not only that, they were paid to raise their own son.  Once again we God continuing to honor His people, using the most unlikely of sources.

The Bible has some interesting ironies in it.  Consider that Egypt was a godless, heathen nation, yet was used by God for the salvation of His people on several occasions.  First, Jacob and all the Israelites moved into Goshen to live out the famine.  Then the deliverer of the Hebrews, Moses, was taken into Egyptian royalty and given the best education a Hebrew ever had.  And the greatest irony of all:  Mary, Joseph and young Jesus escaped into Egypt, where they lived for a time until it was safe for them to return home.  It reminds us of this verse-

[A] sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.  (Proverbs 13:22b NIV)

Another good verse to keep in mind  here is Romans  8:28-

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (NIV)

It may be difficult to discern what God is doing in your life, especially if things don’t seem to be very well.  But we only see a very small part of the picture, don’t we?  Faith is believing God is at work in the background.

3.  His biggest mistake, verses 11-14

Moses, raised as an Egyptian, could not forget his Hebrew roots.  He felt an affinity towards his people.  The awful treatment of the Jews gave Moses a sense of his mission.  When he was old enough to act on his own, he saw firsthand the injustices being perpetrated on his people.  When he saw an Egyptian beating up on a Jew, something snapped, and longing to do something for his people, Moses killed the Egyptian.  Now, obviously, Moses knew he was not right to this, but he did the only thing he could think of.  He had not authority from Egypt, no authority from God because God had not yet called him; Moses acted completely on his own.  Augustine was correct when he observed-

I affirm that the man, though criminal and really the offender, ought not to have been put to death by one who had no legal right to do so.  But minds that are capable of virtues often produce vices also, and show thereby for what virtue they would have been best adapted, if they had but been properly trained.

Moses did something, just as his parents did something.  However, his parents acted in faith, Moses acted out of emotion.  That’s the difference.

Later on, when he tried to settle a dispute between two Hebrews, Moses learned a hard lesson, one that would cost him four decades.  The injustice he hated so much existed even among his own people.  And he also learned that it is useless to get ahead of God:  a people who would not support a man who wanted to help them were certainly not ready for a deliverer.

And so he fled into Midian, once again towards an unknown future.  We can only imagine how Moses must have felt: disappointed, bitter, confused.  He had to leave Egypt behind; the collected wisdom of the Egyptians was not enough to prepare Moses for his divine calling.  Moses must be taught by God.  And the shepherd of God’s had to learn how to be a shepherd first.