Life Of Moses: Part 1 Series

A few years ago, I met a man who was a surgeon. He specialized in doing surgeries on the arms and on the hands. As he was explaining this all to me, I kept on thinking that it was a good thing I was not a surgeon. ;) The level of precision to do his job properly is absolutely mind-boggling. It was hard to fathom. Just the slightest twitch, or the smallest nick of a scalpel, and you have forced an athlete trying to return to the field to retire, or you have made it so that the person who enjoys sewing will never be able to do it quite as well as they used to. No thanks. I’ll let him keep his job!

God is very much like a precise surgeon, himself. Just the slightest change, and the plan of salvation would’ve fallen apart. The smallest detail, and it all comes crashing down. God had no room for error. He could never sleep on the job, never not bring his A-game. Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if God would ever phone us up and say, “You guys are on your own this week. I’ve had a tough time here and need to take a break.” It doesn’t work that way for God.

The level of precision and consistency that he has applied to his plans is astounding. Take the situation here with Moses. Well, what had happened? God had sent his servant Joseph down to Egypt as a slave, only to raise him up to the second most powerful man in the world so that he might save his people. When he had done this, by storing up enough food to survive through the famine, Joseph’s family moved down to Egypt with him. And there, this family, the Israelites, would remain for 400 years.

As you could imagine, a lot had changed over 400 years. No longer were they a family of 70, but instead had grown into a large nation. I’ve heard estimates that within 80 years of our text, their population of this people was somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 million people based off the fact that they had over 600,000 fighting men.

Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, saw this potential for power with the Israelites, and decided that enough was enough. The plan to accomplish this was cruel. At first, it was simply to make them do hard labor. But, that didn’t work and the Israelites grew in number. So, Pharaoh decided that his plan had to change. Now, the midwives had been given an order that if the Israelites gave birth to a baby boy, they were to murder him there on the spot. This plan still did not work since the midwives obeyed God rather than men. So, Pharaoh tried once more telling the people that every boy who was born to the Israelites must be thrown into the Nile River.

Well, guess what? God has a way of overcoming the will of man if man’s will stands in opposition to his own. God had given his Word to his people, the message of his love, and they followed him still because of that love, in spite of Pharaoh’s edict. Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. God had given mankind his will for us to multiply and fill the earth. To our day even, this command is to be carried out. Thankfully, this man from the house of Levi and his wife did what God wanted. Would this have been easy for them? I think we can safely assume not. Although there would probably have been rejoicing when she found out she was pregnant, I’m guessing there was fear too, wondering if this child would be a boy. Then, when she had given birth, I again assume there would have been joy, but greater fear than they had experienced yet. What would’ve happened if they would’ve been caught with this baby boy? If Pharaoh was willing to murder a child, I do not think it outside the realm of possibility that he would’ve killed these people either.

Yet, once again, these parents obeyed God rather than men. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. I can’t begin to imagine the fear these parents would’ve had. All of you know what a baby is like. They have no shame in crying. They’ll cry in the middle of the night, they’ll cry when there’s company, they’ll cry just because they feel like it. Knowing that, we can confidently say that God had a hand in this. You don’t hide a baby for three months without someone knowing. And yet, they did. God be praised.