God Will Take Care of Your Child

Propositional Statement

“Christians have to trust God’s providence when you cannot trace what God is doing.”

Mother’s Day

What Did our Mothers teach us:

My mother taught me LOGIC: “If you fall off that swing and break your neck, you can’t go to the store with me,” as well as, “If everyone else jumped off a cliff would you do it too?”

My mother taught me HUMOR: “When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.”

My mother taught me ANTICIPATION: “Just wait until your father gets home.”

My mother taught me RECEIVING: “You are going to get it when I get you home.”

My mother taught me RELIGION: “You better pray that will come out of the carpet.”

My mother taught me about STAMINA: “You’ll sit there until all that spinach is finished.”

My mother taught me about THE CIRCLE OF LIFE: “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.”

And the all time favorite thing my mother taught me, JUSTICE: “ One day you will have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you. Then you’ll see what it’s like! I can’t wait!”

Chapter 2

Pharaoh’s decree that all first born male children has caused chaos and pandemonium in the land of Goshen. Exodus 1:8

Exodus 1:8 ESV

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

Israel survived through Joseph’s favor with the previous Pharoah. They lived in the best land, Goshen and they multiplied to the point where the new Pharoah grew concerned to where he decided to deal shrewdly with them lest the Israelites joined their enemies. They served with rigor and hard bondage, and when that didn’t work, he resorted to genocide, the killing of the Hebrew 1st born male child. Can you see the mad dash to try and protect their children from this evil edict? Fathers and mothers scrambling to get their sons to safety....God uses three women to do what they were good at and what their culture especially honored in women: preserving and raising a child…One woman with her privileged status…Moses’ mother and sister by reason of their wit and fortitude are weaved into this narrative of faith.

God’s Providence

Providence, then, is the sovereign, divine superintendence of all things, guiding them toward their divinely predetermined end in a way that is consistent with their created nature, all to the glory and praise of God.  This divine, sovereign, benevolent control of all things by God is the underlying premise of everything that is taught in the Scriptures. Providence is more than provision, it is trusting God’s decision and directions for your living....Many trust what God provides while openly and secretly disagreeing with his decisions. When we speak of providence, we link it to what God does, but it is much more than receiving answer to prayers, or receiving God’s provision. God’s providence set creation in motion, divided the day from night, set the moon, stars, and sun in their orbits, divided the earth from the sky, made the flowers bloom and the trees to grow

Providential Purpose

Yes, verse 1 seems to provide minor information to the reader, but this verse does more than that. Moses was a chosen child from the only proper tribe for his future calling....this verse assures the reader that Moses was prequalified for the service God later gave him, even in advance of the revelation that would make that qualification necessary. The Levite tribe would supply the priest who would bridge the “holiness” gap between God and Israel, our modern day “clergy.” In the midst of Pharaoh’s edict, a Levite couple conceived and bore a son. This would be deliverer was born at a time where death is the order of the day. “What God begins, he will see it through to completion.” The word fine here is טוֹב (tob), meaning having the qualities that make something useful and desirable. In this baby, she saw in her child qualities externally and internally that would allow her child to play an integral role in the divine redemptive plan. Abraham’s pre qualification involved his family’s willingness to settle in Canaan, which then led to the revelation of his position as the father of many nations. Aaron, Moses’ brother, had to be a Levite and witness of God’s theophany if he were to be a priest and the leader and progenitor of all subsequent priest. Samson was set aside from birth as a Nazarite to become a deliverer of his people from the Philistines. Samuel prequalification came in the form a divine call of endearment early in life. David’s early anointing and precocious military skills established prequalification. Paul’s descendancy from Jews on both sides of his family gave his mission to the Gentiles the credibility of is impeccable Hebrew lineage. Jesus was prequalified in every conceivable way, from his eternality, to his descendancy from David to his Nazarene citizenship. “God calls those he qualifies because he formed your before the foundations of the world.” Jeremiah 1:5

Jeremiah 1:5 ESV

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Providential Protection

“Safety comes in our nearness to God, not in our distance from our enemies.”

—Dillion Burroughs

At some point, the mother knew she would have to do something before the Egyptian soldiers found her fine son and drowned him in the Nile with the other sons. Like God instructed Noah to build the ark for his family and the animals two by two, Moses’ mother made an ark for her first born son. The term for what Moses’ mother put him in is tēbāh, found only in the flood story in Genesis 6-8 where it is translated “ark.” As Moses recounts his own life story, he draws the attention to the fact that God, through Moses’ mother’s actions, was graciously protecting him from death by a small ark, just as God had protected Noah and the animals by a great ark in the days of the great flood. Both he and Moses were deliverers/rescuers who were called by God to lead people and animals through and out of danger into a new location where those people and animals would become dominant in establishing a new stage of God’s unfolding plan of redemption of the world. “Safety comes in our nearness to God, not in our distance from our enemies.” Most make this narrative exciting by saying Moses floated down the Nile to Pharaoh’s house, but the reality is that Jochebed covertly placed the ark among the reeds so that his cries could be muffled, far enough out that the Egyptian police/soldiers would not see her give him love and create a camouflage of covering where the soldiers would just walk by. It need not be assumed that the baby Moses would have been in his ark virtually around the clock. Egyptian sweeps for babies in Israelite settlements were presumably occasional rather than constant, lest the whole Egyptian local force be occupied with little else. Such sweeps were almost surely conducted by day, since at night in ancient times torches and larger (search) lamps were not easily brought into houses (Pharaoh had not, after all, ordered Israelite houses burned down, either purposely or accidentally). The Israelites also may have developed warning systems that gave at least a few minutes’ notice to mothers. The ark had always to be ready, so especially during periods of the day when Egyptians were around, Moses would be secreted there. “God can use the reeds to cover you until favor finds you.

Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, vol. 2, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 90.

Providential Positioning

Divine providence is God’s preserving His creation, operating in every event in the world, and directing the things in the universe to His appointed end for them.

The babe, destined for greatness was hidden among reeds by his mother to spare his life from death, while his sister Miriam watched over him from a distance. The phrase “she stood a a distance” is יצב, meaning be in a standing position implying one stays in the same position for an extended period of time. She was close enough to know to see what would happen to him, but it was also far enough so that she would not be seen. Moses does not provide how much time passed betwen him being placed “among the reeds by the river bank,” but what we do know is that he was there long enough for Pharaoh’s daughter to find him. Jochebed did not purposely sit Moses on the doorstep of Pharaoh’s house, because had they discovered him they would have killed him. Yet, the opposite happened!!! He was discovered by not just an Egyptian, but Pharaoh’s daughter. Under any other condition and discovery by an Egyptian soldier would lead to Moses’ death, but in a place where death was inevitable, God uses it a a perfect protection of his life. This is God at work, providing deliverance in an unanticipated way. “Trusting God is leaving what you love in his hands.”

Moses must have heard this part of the story many times, and not merely from his adoptive mother but from Jochebed and, indeed, from Miriam herself. Miriam controlled the action: she apparently didn’t run when the Egyptian women arrived but remained at her post and affected curiosity when the baby was found. She must have gotten close enough to the action to overhear the princess’s various expressions of concern for the boy (e.g., “He’s crying!” “He must be hungry!” “I can’t leave him like this!”), and Miriam wisely volunteered a wet nurse she knew well (her own mother). The turning point of the story is contained in a one-word command, that of the princess: “Go”! With that decision of the king’s daughter, Moses’ protection was assured. It goes without saying that Miriam knew Egyptian well enough to converse with the princess; most Hebrews probably knew Egyptian relatively well, in light of their long history in the country, notwithstanding their partial geographical confinement.126It may have been difficult for Jochebed to process what she first heard from Miriam, breathlessly arriving at the home to summon her. Egyptians—the enemy—had found the baby she had so carefully hidden! But Miriam was obviously able to convince her mother that there was no harm—at least not yet—in following through with the offer to become her baby’s nurse. After all, that immediately legitimized her caring openly for her own child and eliminated the need to hide him any longer. So the determined mother met the daughter of the source of her worst fears, God having turned the circumstances toward hope and salvation.

Though giving up her little boy when the time came to turn him over to the princess must have been heartwrenching for Jochebed, we should not assume that Moses never had contact thereafter with his family. The descriptions of his later reuniting with his brother Aaron as described in chap. 4 assume that they knew each other all along, and the importance of Miriam’s role in the exodus leadership suggests that she and Moses were hardly strangers. The emphasis of v. 10 rests on the adoption, with requisite Egyptian name. “Moses” follows the typical pattern of ancient naming in which a name (usually an existing, known name) was not selected prior to birth, as in modern Western practice, but only after birth and suggested by some sort of circumstance or speech experienced or heard at the time of birth—in this case at the time of the child’s discovery. So a relatively common Egyptian name, meaning “son” or “to beget a son,”130 is chosen as appropriate because it sounds something like mōšēh, the active participle of the verb māšāh, “draw out,” which connects to the circumstances of Moses’ discovery and being “drawn out” of the water. Through this name, the princess both consciously honors the Hebrew origins of her son and also makes him legitimately Egyptian with a name in her own language that emphasizes that she is adopting a son.

Be not dismayed whate’er betide, God will take care of you; Beneath his wings of love abide, God will take care of you.

Refrain: God will take care of you, through ev'ry day, o’er all the way; He will take care of you, God will take care of you.

2 Through days of toil when heart doth fail, God will take care of you; When dangers fierce your path assail, God will take care of you. [Refrain]

3 No matter what may be the test, God will take care of you; Lean, weary one, upon his breast, God will take care of you. [Refrain]