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Well, it gives me great encouragement to be fitted in between Eddie Schwartz and Charles Oxendine. I, I fit right in. You might be interested in knowing that, uh, 60 years ago this, this summer, uh, I, I came to faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, uh, not ever realizing the, uh, roller coaster that would be ahead of me in the next sixty years. Fifty years ago, this fall was my first visit, well, to the States and to North Carolina, and the very first place I preached in North Carolina was Mebane Gospel Chapel.
Thank you for the confidence that you placed in me as a, a young, a young man, still wet behind the ears, um, here I am fifty years later. I didn't ever realize or imagine that within five years I'd be, I'd be living here and I'd be, I'd be married. So there, there, there you are. So forty five years coming up, uh, our uh forty fifth wedding anniversary, and she's, she's still putting up with this, uh, this old man. So there you are. Uh, somebody told me that if I were to bring Amy with me, um, every time, I'd get more invitations to come to Mebane Gospel Chapel.
So I, I, I, I don't know. I don't know. Certainly good to be here. Turn with me, if you will, please, to the book of Exodus, second book in our Bible, second book in the Old Testament. Exodus chapter two. I want to read the first ten verses of the second chapter of Exodus. And there went a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter of Levi, and the woman conceived and bare a son, and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.
And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes and daubed it with slime and with pitch and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walked along by the river's side, and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it, and when she had opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the babe wept, and she said, this is one of the Hebrews' children.
Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child and nursed it, and the child grew. And she brought it unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son, and she called his name Moses, and she said, because I drew him out of the water.
Let's pray. Father, we do want to thank you again for the knowledge of your truth, which is presented to us in the pages of this wonderful book from which we have read this morning. We're grateful, Father, that you have not left us without a witness. We don't have to grope around in the darkness of this world to find the way, for your way is clear. And our Lord Jesus said, if anyone would come to the Father, they must come through me. And we thank you, Father, for the glorious experience of knowing the Father through the Son, and we pray that you might encourage us, especially our women folk today, as we're reminded again of their awesome responsibility and the tremendous potential that each one of them have in influencing others.
So we pray, Father, that you'll speak to us through your word and bless us, we pray, in your presence, for Jesus' sake. Amen. I've often wondered whether it's easier to preach a Mother's Day message or a Father's Day message. Mother's Day is very easy, you just tell the moms what a wonderful job they're doing. Father's Day, you just tell the dads what a terrible job they're doing. I don't know about that, but certainly it's good to remember our mothers on this particular day. As we were driving down, we happened to mention that, uh, the only mother that, uh, Amy has left is, uh, Carol Baker Thompson.
Since my mom's gone and her mom's gone, Carol has been her friend, her mentor, her encourager for many, many years before I even, uh, met them. Uh, by the way, I've known Carol, uh, longer than I've known my wife, so there- there you are. Uh, she may have had something to do with our, uh, getting together. I'm not sure about that, but, uh, I think she and Charlie were, uh, were in cohorts together to try and make something happen, so thank you. Um... Mother's Day is hard for some. I know Amy's mom, Nancy Falk, had a friend who would never, ever attend services on Mother's Day because she didn't have a child.
And evidently she couldn't handle it. And of course, that's true of many other women, some who are childless, some who've suffered a miscarriage, some who are going through fertility problems, and maybe some who have a memory of an abortion which may have been confessed and forgiven, and yet they wonder what might have been. I've enjoyed the writings of Peter Marshall over the years.
He was a Scotsman who came to study in the United States, and eventually, uh, as a, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, he was, uh, chaplain to the Senate for a number of years. Unfortunately, he died at age forty six. His wife, uh, Catherine Marshall, has written, uh, memoirs, A Man Called Peter, and, um, in her book on Peter's sermons, entitled Mr. Jones, Meet the Master. She quotes, um, a poem that, uh, or or or a reading that, uh, Peter Marshall was very fond of saying.
The Keeper of the Springs. The story that Peter Marshall loved to tell. The story is a tale of a quiet forest dweller who lived high above an Austrian village along the eastern slope of the Alps. The keeper of the spring was an old gentleman who had been hired many years earlier by a young town town councilman to clear away the debris from the pools of water up in the mountain crevices that fed the lovely springs flowing through their town. With faithful silent regularity, he patrolled the hills, removing the leaves and the branches, wiping away the silt that would otherwise have choked and contaminated the fresh flow of water.
The village soon became a popular cha- attraction for vacationers. Graceful swans floated along in the crystal clear spring. The mill wheels of various businesses located near the water turned day and night. Farmlands were naturally irrigated, and the view from restaurants was picturesque and beyond description. Years passed. One evening, the town council met for its semi-annual meeting, and as they reviewed the budget, one man's eye caught the salary figure being paid to the obscure keeper of the springs. Said the keeper of the purse, who is the old man?
Why do we keep him on year after year? No one ever sees him, for all we know. The stranger ranging the hills is doing us no good. He isn't necessary any longer. And by a unanimous vote, they dispensed with the old man's services. For several weeks, nothing changed, but by early autumn, the trees had begun to shed their leaves. Small branches snapped off and fell into the pools, hindering the rushing flow of sparkling water. One afternoon, someone noticed a slight yellowish brown tint in the spring. A few days later, the water was much darker. Within another week, a slimy film covered sections of the water along the banks, and a foul odor was soon detected.
The mill wheels moved slowly. Some finally ground to a halt. The swans left, as did the tourists. Clammy fingers of disease and sickness reached deeply into the village. Quickly, the embarrassed council called a special meeting. Realizing their gross error in judgment, they rehired the old keeper of the springs, and within a few weeks, the veritable river of life began to clear up. The wheels started to turn, and new life returned to the hamlet in the Alps. And of course, the point that Peter Marshall was making was our mothers, our women folk are the unseen, unsung, often unnamed keepers of the springs.
Our hero this morning, or heroine, is a mother whose name is not mentioned but uh two times in the Bible. It's not mentioned in Exodus chapter two, although we've read about her story. It's not mentioned in Acts chapter seven, where Stephen begins talking about the history of God's ancient people, the Jews. Her name isn't even mentioned in chapter eleven of the book of Hebrews, where the heroes of the faith are listed.
Just two times is the name of Jochebed mentioned in our Bible. Once later on, chapter six in the book of Exodus, and then also in chapter twenty six of the book of Numbers. Now, Exodus chapter two follows Exodus chapter one. Is that a revelation to you? See, we need to get a, a feel of the history here. Exodus chapter one speaks of a change in administration.
We read that a new king arose in Egypt, who didn't have a sense of history, or at least may have deliberately ignored the history. What was the history? Well, that Egypt owed their survival to a young man whose name was Joseph. A young man who'd been trafficked and found himself in Egypt, found himself in some difficult circumstances, but God's hand was at work in the life of this young man, Joseph. He was elevated to be prime minister of Egypt, and during a time of terrible s- famine, he was the savior.
He'd stockpiled grain from previous years of bounty, so that when things got rough, Egypt had food enough and to spare. In fact, so much so that they were able to sell it to the surrounding nations, who also had succumbed to the drought and the bad harvest that Egypt was going through. And ultimately, we read in the book of Genesis how Joseph brought his whole family, seventy people, if you, if you will, and brought them to settle in Egypt.
But now we're four hundred years later. That family has become a nation, often known as the Hebrews, sometimes known as the children of Israel, named after Joseph's father, Jacob, who is also named Israel. And the time came, as we read in chapter one, that a new king arose that didn't know Jo- Joseph or, or, or didn't remember Joseph or, or had no sense of history, who wasn't willing to give Joseph credit for the survival of the nation of Egypt. And he looked around, and he was threatened.
Threatened by the fact that these people, the people of Israel, had, had grown in number. I don't think there's any indication that they'd outgrown numerically the population of Egypt, but surely they were quite a strong force. And the king reasoned, you know, if ever we were at war and these people of Israel joined our enemies, that would be a dangerous time for us. And so we need to take care of this. We need to deal wisely with these people, not wisely on behalf of the people of Israel, but wisely.
How can we figure out how to control them, how to limit their power? And so they enslaved them, and they began to use the slave labor of the people of God in building the treasure cities of Egypt. When you think about it, it's not the first time that God's people have been marginalized, criticized, criminalized, persecuted. Happens all over the world, even today. Europe, Britain, they've given God's people, Christians, a very hard time.
I'm not sure it'll ever come to that here in this country. We ought to be prepared for it. We certainly realize that the Christians in many ways are considered the bad guys. And when we stand on the truth of God's word, and when we simply articulate the standards that God expects of his creatures, we're told that we're uttering hate speech. I suppose every so often there's a, a, a lull in that, uh, antith- uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, antithopy t- towards the Christians, uh, times of revival, um, times of great awakening.
They tell us that there's an awakening among the group known as the Generation Z. Their parents, the millennials, uh, weren't particularly religious. Many of them had no religious affiliation at all, and in the census they are described as nones. I don't mean nuns, uh, N-O-N-E-S, no religious affiliation whatever. But their kids, according to what we're reading, are coming alive to the possibilities of what God has to say to them, what life is all about, and what's the purpose of life.
I think we'll hopefully see that illustrated in our involvement in the camps this summer. This Generation Z might truly respond to the truth of the gospel. We pray that that might be the case. But as we look at this time, when the king is, well, he's given an edict, and when he's figured out that giving this people of Israel a, a, a harder task, and even taking the, the raw materials away from them to, to build bricks and to, uh, build these cities, he decided we need to stamp out the growth, the biological growth of this people.
And so he ordered the midwives that they should bring these children who were being born, if it was a male child, they were to kill that child. If it was a female, they could let the female live. Well, two individuals are highlighted here, two Hebrew midwives, one of them known as Puah and the other known as Shiphrah. Two out of five women, actually, that figure largely in these few verses or these few chapters of the book of Exodus.
Two midwives. And when they call for the midwife, they claim that when they get there, the Hebrew women have already given birth, so it's too late. We don't know who those midwives were. Were they Hebrew women, nurses that helped the Hebrew ladies in giving birth? Or were they Egyptians assigned to the business of helping the Hebrew women.
All we know is this, that these midwives feared God more than they feared the king. So that ploy didn't work, and so the king has another edict. This time we'll take all the baby boys when they're born, and we'll throw them in the Nile. We'll drown them. That way these people won't be able to multiply. Enter Jochebed and Amram, her husband.
They're mentioned really just as the mother of Moses or the parents of Moses. And when they hear this edict, knowing that they're about to have a third child. You can imagine that the potential joy and exhilaration of having a new baby in the house was rather clouded. I'm perfectly sure they didn't have ultrasound in those days, and there was no clue as to what the gender of the child was until that child was born.
If it was a girl, you could breathe a sigh of relief. If it was a boy, the results could possibly be ominous. But we read that not fearing the edict or the wrath of the king, they decided to hide this baby for three months. Now, I think you'll agree with me that to hide a child as far as sight is concerned might not be an impossible task, but to hide a child as far as sound is concerned, that might be more of a challenge.
And after three months, they knew that they were fighting a losing battle. After three months, they knew that they could not continue this. They were risking their own lives, they were risking the lives of their older children, Aaron, who was probably three or four at the time, and Miriam, their oldest daughter, their older daughter, who was probably, uh, eight or nine at the time. And so, this couple decided that they had to do something. And so reluctantly, they took that baby and put it in the river Nile.
Oh, not, not to drown it, but to protect it. The waters of the Nile that had carried away so many of those boys in recent days, now becomes the place where their little boy was going to find protection and provision. Now it says that when he was born, they saw that he was a goodly child. You know, all parents, when they look at their children, think that they're, they're goodly children. In Acts chapter seven, Moses is described as being beautiful.
But Stephen, in his sermon in Acts chapter seven, qualifies that by saying the child was beautiful to God. In God's eyes, there was something special about this child, and and Jochebed and Amram knew that somehow this child had a destiny. This child had a future. This child was destined for greater things. And so they made this little basket. They'd seen what the culture had done to other young boys in the Nile, but now they're going to give their little baby a chance.
Now, culture is what goes on in a civilization around people. I always remember the words of a sociology professor I had years ago who defined culture in this way. Culture is the thought out, tried out, preferred way of the people. Hm? The thought out, tried out, preferred way of the people. So what does that mean? It means culture can change. Sometimes slowly, sometimes very rapidly, because when people think out and try out and prefer something new, that becomes part of culture.
It's probably ten years ago since David Jeremiah wrote his book about culture, which he entitles I Never thought I would see the day. And he went and he looked at the changes in culture. This is ten years ago. Uh, it's time David Jeremiah updated his book, because the last ten or fifteen years, what major changes have happened in our culture? Not for the better, certainly for the worse.
And yet there are still some people who, like Jochebed, are counterculture. Jochebed was a counterculture mom, and her son became a basket case. There he is, in a little basket, in the gold rushes, in a little area of the Nile. And in that position, he was not only vulnerable, but in spite of the fact that he was hidden in the bulrushes, evidently he was visible.
Because when the Pharaoh's daughter came to bathe, I think that was a, a, a ritual bathing, and not like having a, a her morning swim. Because you can imagine that her boudoir boasted the very latest in indoor plumbing. And the very faucets of her tiled boudoir would probably be made out of gold. Her sink would probably be American, uh, sorry, American standard, Egyptian standard.
So she didn't not need to go to the Nile to have her morning bathed. She was there because the gods of the Nile were the ones who brought fertility. She was childless. But isn't it like our God, the true God, the God of creation, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, your God and mine? Isn't it just like him to bring together circumstances? Isn't it just like him to engineer coincidences? All part of God's plan.
And they find the baby, and Favor's daughter falls in love. Can you imagine Jochebed putting that little boat in the water? Will she ever see him again? The uncertainty of currents might drive that little boat downstream. The ever-present crocodiles might attack and kill that little baby. So small, so vulnerable, so dependent. What will happen downstream?
See, I think that we have in the life of Jochebed, something that we might call a long view of the future. N- n- not that she was able to figure out just exactly where circumstances would lead and where eventually her son, her special son, upon which God had placed his hand, would eventually end up. Could she project thirty years ahead of time and see her son as the crown prince of Egypt?
Is that what she prayed for? N- no. Worldly acclaim, worldly advancement might count for something, but b- but she had something deeper and and and more eternal in mind. What did she think? Forty years later, when he's out looking after sheep on the backside of the desert. W- w- w- w- what's wrong with this picture, Jochebed? He was doing so well.
I don't understand it, but I believe God's in control. Add another forty years. He's no longer herding sheep in the desert. He's herding two million sheeple, uh, that's people that act like sheep, Two million of them through a wilderness. Oh, he's well equipped to handle wilderness situations. He's well equipped to handle sheep in the wilderness. So, is this his destiny? Evidently, Moses becomes the great liberator and the great lawgiver.
And it's all because his mother dared to do something cult can counterculture. Thirteen centuries later, the writer of the book of Hebrews in chapter eleven tells of Moses's faith. Actually, first of all, he talks about his parents' faith. By faith, Moses' parents defied Pharaoh and took care of their son in the way that we've outlined. But then it comes, the next verse, by faith Moses, when he was come of years, refused to become the s- be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but chose rather to suffer ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.
In other words, he made up his mind. He was going to leave Egypt. It was going to cost him. The circumstances were not the greatest, but there he was, out of Egypt. Could never go back. Oh, well, God's plan was that he would go back. Because God's plan was that Moses would be used to liberate the people of Israel, God's people, from their slavery in Egypt. Interestingly, hundreds of years later, another ungodly king who was also threatened by a baby born in his regime, slaughtered the young boys.
At least one child survived the danger and was being pro- and was protected by being secreted away to, tell me where? Egypt, of all places. That's where our Lord Jesus spent the first two years of his life. In Egypt. And the Bible was right when his... the prophecy is mentioned, I will call my son out of Egypt. Not talking about Moses and the children, but talking about the incarnate Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. So much here.
All right. Listen to a quotation from Jean Carson. Jean Carson was a worker, uh, in the Netherlands, Holland, with the Navigators years ago. She's written two classic books on, uh, women of the Bible, simply known as Her Name is Woman, volume One and volume Two. And here's how she sums up the story of Jochebed. The Bible mentions her name only twice, but it is forever engraved in the history as the name of one of the most important mothers who ever lived.
Probably never in history have uh three children of one mother, Jochebed, ever had such an influence at the same time. Aaron, the older brother, became the priest, the high priest. Miriam, the young daughter, who was the go-between when the Pharaoh's daughter found the baby, she offered to bring the mother to be a wet nurse to take care of that child. Later on, she became a prophetess.
All three children from that family. What success. And then the question comes up in our mind, what happens when they don't become stellar, stars in the sky for God? Well, I want us to think again of that whole thought, uh, about the long view. I, I, I look at my own history. I can't imagine what my parents went through in my early teens. I basically walked away from everything I'd ever been taught.
Not interested in attending services. Not a terribly wicked young man, but certainly not living a godly life. I believe it drove my mother particularly to her knees. And the story is very simple. I was confronted in such a way at age seventeen by the claims of Christ, that, um, everything changed. My whole life was altered, the whole direction of my life. My whole future was altered. And the story isn't end yet. So w- we keep praying.
We do pray God will take our young people, our children, our grandchildren, and bring them not only to simple faith in the Lord Jesus, but a living relationship where they seek to follow him and live for him and make a mark for him. We probably won't, many of us won't be Jochebeds or Amrams, but we can do our part to point the next generation to the Lord Jesus. I like the song that Steve Green used to sing.
We're pilgrims on a journey of the narrow road, and those who've gone before us line the way, cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary, their lives a stirring testament to God's sustaining grace. Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run the race, not only for the prize, but as those who've gone before us, listen to this, let us leave to those behind us the heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives. And the refrain, the chorus goes like this: Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful.
May the fire of our devotion light their way. May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe, and the lives we live inspire them to obey. May all who come behind us find us faithful. Lord, find us faithful. Let's pray. Father, we thank you again for the many blessings that life affords us, and the many opportunities to which we turn our minds at this point, at the close of our service.
It's our prayer that you might open our eyes to see those opportunities, and in spite of facing tremendous odds that are not in our favor, we thank you for the example of Jochebed and of Amram. We thank you for the good hand upon Miriam and the grace that you showed to the Pharaoh's daughter. For the faithfulness of two almost insignificant midwives who, by their inaction, in faith toward God, perhaps saved many from destruction.
We thank you most of all for your good hand upon Moses. We just pray, Father, for the next generation, for our children, our grandchildren, maybe our grand- great-grandchildren at this point, that your hand might be upon them, ever drawing them close to you, to an enjoyment of salvation and to a productive life for the Savior. We thank you for your hand upon us. May you guide us and bless us in the days that lie ahead and enable us to have a long view of what you ultimately are going to do in us and through us.
Bless us then, we pray, as we give now our thanks and prayers in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.