27th February 2023

27th February 2023


Pray (ACts)


Read - Hebrews 11:23 (Exodus 2)


Message Alan Burke 


As a parent more and more I am confronted with the impact for good and for ill I can make in the lives of my children. They are like little sponges that soak everything up, the difficulty is of course when the soak up things that you don’t want them to and when you have to challenge their behaviour and they turn round and say “but you do that!”. There are other times that it suddenly dawns on me that I’m so like my Dad or so like my Mum. Our parents have had such an impact on us in ways that we will never truly appreciate and we have such an impact on our children that we will never truly appreciate. I’d also say that the church has such an impact on our children that we will never truly appreciate for the good and for ill. 


Why do I mention this, well it is because today we focus not on Moses but his parents, their faith. It is easy to read Hebrews 11 and pass over the faith of Moses’ parents after all they are not even mentioned by name. While Hebrews doesn’t tell us their names we know that they were called Amram and Jochebed (Exodus 6v20). We are told in Hebrews that for three months Moses’ parents hid him which is referring to the events in Exodus 2. Before that we learn of a king who didn’t know about Joseph (1:8), he looked upon the Israelites with a nationalistic zeal, fearing them. They put slave masters over them, pressed them with forced labour, the Israelites none the less multiplied, he ordered the midwives to kill the boys born to them, they didn’t do it, so pharaoh ordered that the people throw even boy born to an the Israelites into the nile. 


Hebrews doesn’t give us the details that Exodus gives us tells us that by faith they hid Moses for three months. Moses’ mother did all that she could, for three months she hid her son, the screaming the crying, the dirty nappies, this wasn’t an easy job, yet she does all that she could to preserve the life of the child in spite of Pharaoh’s edict. Then when she was no longer able to conceal her growing baby son within her home she weaves and waterproofs a basket. This isn’t the lovely little story that we have domesticated, this is an act of desperation by these parents. 


Jochabed we are told in Exodus 2 states; When she saw that he was a fine child she hid him. Hebrews in the NIV puts it as "because they saw that the child was beautiful”, Acts helps us to understand what is being conveyed to us here in both instances, for in Acts 7:20 we are told when he was born, he was no ordinary child. 


The parents of Moses by faith recognised that God’s hand was on Moses. They were willing to disobey the king by faith, not being afraid of what the king might do to them if he discovered that they had been hiding their child for three months. God used these parents’ courageous act to place their son, the Hebrew of his choice, in the house of Pharaoh. These parents were showing that they believed in God’s covenant promises in the midst of all of this, the promises that had been given to their forefather Abraham and through their faith Moses was saved and would by God’s providence be instrumental in God’s plan of redemption. These parents trusted in the promises of God. 


The impact that they had as parents was that Moses rejected the wealth, fame, power that were his, all for the sake of Christ. If you’re a parent you have a massive role to play in what your children will look to, to what they will treasure, but likewise we as the church have a role in praying for, in nurturing our covenant children. We should be praying for them, encouraging them, showing them our faith in how we live, even to how we sing on the Lord’s day so that they will see in us and know that what matters more than the riches of this world is Christ.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q87 What is repentance unto life?
Repentance unto life is a saving grace, (Acts 11:18) whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, (Acts 2:37–38) and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, (Joel 2:12, Jer. 3:22) doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, (Jer. 31:18–19, Ezek. 36:31) with full purpose of, and endeavour after, new obedience. (2 Cor. 7:11, Isa. 1:16–17)