(Exodus) Exodus 2:1-4

Now we widen it out here in this book, and let me begin reading now with Exodus 2, verse 1. And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took the wife, a daughter of Levi. That is, to me, a very wonderful way that Moses gives his own record. He gives a very modest account, and that's one reason I am turning to these other sections where we have a mention of Moses, because he certainly is very humble in the way that he presents it.

In other words, I'm sure most of us would want to tell about our father and mother in a great deal of detail. He doesn't even mention them by name. These were just ordinary folk.

They were in slavery. They were members of the tribe of Levi. And it's just the same old story.

We're going to find it again and again in the Word of God. And that is the old story of a man sees a woman and falls in love with her and tells her so, and she loves him, and they get married and they have a child. That's getting right down to the nitty-gritty, folk, and that's what human life is all about, to tell the truth.

And that's the story that is shared. Later on, we're given their name. And I have asked this question of classes, and I've also heard it asked on radio years ago, when they had these Bible quizzes, who is Hamram and Jockebed? And boy, they scratched their heads, and folks said, well, never heard of them.

Well, that's the name of the man and the woman here of the tribe of Levi, the father and mother of Moses. We'll pick up that name when we get to the 6th chapter. Now, will you notice, "...and the woman conceived and bare a son.

When she saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months." Now, that's all it said about him. He was a good, healthy child. That's all Moses is saying here.

And I'm sure that many of us would like to tell about what a precocious child we were when we were little, and most of us feel that way about it. But Moses, notice how reticent he is in giving his own record. Verse 3, "...and when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, daubed it with slime and with pitch, put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's bank." There are several things that we need to comment about here.

I think the first thing that's quite evident is that he was not only a good, healthy child, he had a good set of lungs, and they could hide him at first. But there came the day when little Moses could really scream at the top of his voice. And what a contrast that is to him later on when he pleads to the Lord that he can't speak, you know, for the Lord.

And I'm afraid a great many of us were good at crying as a baby, but we don't do so well today for the Lord. Well, she has to do something about it now. May I say that there are a lot of pious folk today that would have done it different than Jochebed did it.

I think that some of these folk today would have said, well, we're just going to trust the Lord. May I say that's wonderful to say that, but really do you trust the Lord when you actually are playing the fool? She'd have been foolish to have kept this child in the house there when a guard passing by, one of the slave drivers, why, he'd have heard the child. It'd have been absurd.

Well, somebody I know would come forth and say, well, you know that the child wouldn't cry when the slave driver went by. How do you know? May I say to you, faith is not a leap in the dark, as I heard a liberal say years ago. If it's a leap in the dark, don't make the leap, friends.

God asks you to believe that which is good and solid, and he's never asked you to do anything foolish. When you believe God, you believe God, friends, and not some silly type of circumstance. God expects us to use our good old consecrated gumption.

We need a lot of good religious gumption today, and she does a sensible thing. She makes a little ark, and she puts Moses in it. This woman now is acting in a sensible way, and that's an evidence she's trusting God.

Now, not only that, and his sister stood far off to wit what would be done to him. So she puts the little sister down there. Now again, she could have put him down there and said, oh, I trust the Lord.

I'll just let him go on. I remember that a mother that I talked to about her son years ago. Well, may I say that the boy's been in prison since then, and I told her what I thought that she ought to do, and she said, well, she didn't feel like that was trusting the Lord.

Well, what she did is very foolish. It wasn't really trusting the Lord. Let's be very careful.

This pious nonsense today is not trusting the Lord at all. Now, she could put him down there in the bulrushes and said, oh, I just leave him there in the hands of the Lord, but she just happened to put Miriam, his sister, his elder sister, to watch over him down there.