Miriam

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Where are we to praise the Lord? With other believers. With other redeemed saints, those who have been set free. In the assembly of the godly.

We’re to sing to the Lord. We’re not just to watch others sing or listen to others sing in the assembly of the godly. We’re to join in with them in singing to the Lord.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, August 29.

We’ve been studying the life of a great worshiper of God. If you’ve missed any of our series on Miriam, you can catch up onReviveOurHeartsRadio.com. Today we’ll look at Miriam’s song as Nancy continues the series Remember Miriam.

Nancy: The Lord did not bless me with a great singing voice. Somebody said to me just a little bit ago, “I understand that you have a degree in piano performance. Do you ever play the piano?” I said, “Well, I love to, but I don’t have many opportunities to do it anymore with my schedule.”

Then they asked, “Do you sing?” I said no, and then I said, “Well, I do—to the Lord.” I sing to the Lord, and every one of us is supposed to be doing that.

Two of the great worship experiences of my life have taken place in places you might not expect. One was in a prison, and one was in an inner-city church.

In both cases you have people who have been through a whole lot—they have a whole lot of issues, a whole lot of baggage, a whole lot in their life before Christ—who have come to know Christ.

One was at McPhearson Women’s Prison in Arkansas; the other was at the Brooklyn Tabernacle in Brooklyn, New York, where you’ve heard of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.

I love listening to the choir, but I really love listening to the congregation sing. There are so many people in that church, and so many people in McPhearson Women’s Prison, who know what it is not to have a song to sing.

They have stories of their own fallenness and brokenness and disobedience to God; how God rescued them and granted them faith and repentance and has brought them out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light and has given them life. There is just this visceral response to God’s redemption in their lives, and they sing, in both of those places, like they really mean it—nothing ho-hum about their singing!

When I was at the Brooklyn Tabernacle—I’ve actually been there a number of times, and when that congregation sings, it’s like a freight train rumbling through that place. I mean,there’s just this outpouring of God’s grace and mercy and love for Christ and worship for Him that comes out of those people in that congregation.

They have something to sing about, and they know it. They haven’t forgotten what they have to sing about, and it’s the same in the women’s prison. They sing like they really believe what they’re singing. I’ve been touched by those experiences.

I feel a little bit the same way when I come to Exodus chapter 15, the account we’ve been looking at, where Moses and Miriam lead the people of God in singing to the Lord a song of celebration and redemption. In fact, this is the first recorded song in the Bible. It’s the song of those who have been redeemed from bondage.

Remember how Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord as they came across the Red Sea and looked back on the destroyed Egyptian army, and the fact that the Israelite nation was free. They said, “I will sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea” (verse 1). This is speaking, of course, of the Egyptians’ chariots that had drowned in the sea.

Then we have in verse 20 the passage that we have been looking at.

Then Miriam the prophetess took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea” (verses 21-22).

As I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking of my dad, Art DeMoss, who’s been with the Lord now for about 30 years. He was a man who did not walk with the Lord, did not know the Lord until he was in his mid-20s. He made a lot of foolish choices. He was a prodigal, the kind of son that mothers cry over and pray for.

Supernaturally, God drew his heart right into a place where the gospel was being preached, gave him repentance and faith, saved him, and transformed his life. It was a dramatic conversion, but my dad had a terrible singing voice. Now, mine isn’t good; his was terrible.

But he didn’t seem to know or care that his voice was terrible, and when it was time to sing in church, he would sing. I mean, he would actually sing, because he never got over the wonder that God had saved him.

So I can still remember him (some of you have heard me tell this) . . . Our family would be parked there on one of the front rows in church. We’d be singing some of those old gospel songs like, “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” My dad, with this horrible voice, and he would have his hands going—I can just see; I’ve never seen anybody else do it quite this way—banging his hands together and singing (I don’t want to demonstrate it, because people would turn off their radios) “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

He didn’t have singing lessons—I don’t think it would have helped—but he sang to the Lord because he was a soul that had been set free and was so thankful.

Matthew Henry, in his commentary on this passage, says, “When we have received special mercy from God, we ought to be quick and speedy in our return of praise to Him.”

God has shown us His mercy. What should flow out naturally are hymns and songs and choruses of praise; and that’s really what worship is.

Worship is our response to God’s revelation of Himself. It’s our response toredemption, to God’s redemptive works. So worship is our celebration of the destruction of our foes and God’s foes, and our celebration of the display of God’s power.

Now, this singing of Moses and the people, then followed by Miriam and the women, may have been what we call an antiphonal chant. If you’ve studied different kinds of music, you know that sometimes you have two parts of the choir in two different parts of the sanctuary perhaps, and the first choir sings one part and then the second choir echoes back or sings in a responsive way.

It may have been that they went back and forth and that the women would echo, would chant back or sing back what the men had just sung; or it may have been just the women singing the chorus at the end of the hymn.

We don’t know exactly how this went, but we know that Miriam’s song was a response to Moses’ song. It was a refrain, so to speak.

The Scripture tells us in verse 21 that Miriam answered them, Miriam and the women, and then sang essentially the same words, or very close to the same words that Moses had sung in his song with the people. I don’t mean to make a huge deal about this, but I think it’s not insignificant that Miriam, in her singing, was supportive of Moses and his leading of the people in their singing.

In fact it’s interesting, in some of the research that I’ve done on this passage, you’ll find those who use this passage to say, “Look, women should be able to be worship leaders in the church,” and they point to Miriam.

What’s interesting to me is that Miriam, far from being an icon of feminist thinking or egalitarian thinking, really is a great illustration of a true woman, because her worship, her leading of the women is in response to the men who have already led out. She’s singing in agreement with; she’s affirming the male leadership of Moses and echoing. She doesn’t just invent her own song.

Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong for women to write their own songs. Don’t take that any further than what the Scripture does. But I just think it’s interesting that even here she is functioning as a responder to the initiative of Moses, the leader of the people of God.

It says in verse 1 that Moses led the people of Israel, but verse 20 tells us—who did Miriam lead? She led the women. She took her tambourine, and the women followed her with their tambourines, and they began to dance. She led the women in a chorus of response.

So Miriam leads the women to respond to and support and affirm Moses as the leader. What she’s saying in effect is, “Amen. Let it be so. I agree.”

I think, as women, we’re not just talking about music here, but just in the course of life,one of our callings as true women is to affirm godly male leadership and to respond, to be a responder.

Does that mean we never start in leading out a song? I’m not going to go there. I’m just saying, there is a beautiful picture here of Moses leading the people and Miriam following his leadership, and then the women following along behind her.

You see the same concept in Judges chapter 5 where Deborah and Barak, after the defeat of the Canaanites, sing a victory song as a duet. Deborah has played a supportive role, a vital role in that battle, but a supportive role.

So the Scripture says Miriam took the tambourine, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing, and Miriam sang to them or answered them, “Sing to the Lord.”

I want to take a few moments to just park on that phrase, “Sing to the Lord.” By the way, let me tell you, somebody said to me just a little bit ago during one of our sessions today, “Boy, I just wish I could learn to study the Word like you do.” I said to her what I will say to you: “There are no shortcuts.”

I sit there in my study for hours and hours and hours, doing the same thing you can do. Now, I have the privilege of having more hours to do that than most of you may be able to do; but I take the passage and I look at the words and I say, “What does this mean? What is this saying?”

I’ll take a passage or phrase like “Sing to the Lord.” You can go to BibleGateway.com(there are other programs where you can do this also, but that’s one I use a lot) on the Internet and put in a phrase like “Sing to the Lord,” and it will in a jiffy give you all the places in Scripture where that phrase occurs. Then you examine those phrases like I’m going to do in the next few moments here.

“Sing to the Lord.” What do we learn about singing to the Lord from various Scriptures that talk about that? By the way, I think there are maybe 14 verses in the Scripture that have that phrase sing to the Lord.

Matthew Henry said, “Singing is as much the language of holy joy as praying is of holy desire.” When you have holy desire, it comes out in prayer. When you have holy joy, it comes out in the language of singing.

Why should we sing to the Lord? And what is the theme and the substance of what we sing to the Lord?

Well, it’s the gospel. It’s “the old, old story of Jesus and His love.” I love to sing the old, old story of His saving work, His triumph over His enemies, His deliverance of His people, and you see this in Miriam’s song and in the song of Moses here in Exodus 15. “Sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea.”

Psalm 96:2, says, “Sing to the Lord. Bless His name. Tell of His salvation from day to day.” That’s the theme of our song. The theme of our holy singing is the salvation of the Lord.

There was an Irish poet in the 1800s who paraphrased Miriam’s hymn, and he captures in a beautiful way this picture of the salvation of the Lord. He said,

Sound the loud timbrel o’re Egypt’s dark sea. Jehovah has triumphed. His people are free. Sing for the pride of the tyrant is broken. His chariots and horsemen, all splendid and brave, how vain was their hastening. The Lord hath but spoken and chariots and horsemen are sunk in the waves. Sound the loud timbrel o’re Egypt’s dark sea. Jehovah has triumphed. His people are free. -Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

“I will sing unto the Lord,” Psalm 13 says, “because He has dealt bountifully with me” (verse 6).

Psalm 98, “Oh sing unto the Lord a new song for He has done marvelous things; His right hand and His holy arm have worked salvation for Him” (verse 1).

Jeremiah chapter 20, “Sing to the Lord. Praise the Lord, for He has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evil doers” (verse 13).

Listen, if you are saved, then you have something to sing about. You have a theme for your worship, a theme for your songs, a theme for your praise as you live a lifestyle of praise.

So that’s what we should sing and what should prompt our singing, but who should sing? Well, a couple of other verses tell us that.

Psalm 96 tells us, “Oh sing unto the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth” (verse 1). All the earth is supposed to sing to the Lord, and you know what? One day they will. People of every tribe and nation, people who have come out of every conceivable background, people who were lost and in darkness and have come into the glorious light of Christ—all the earth will sing to the Lord.

Isaiah 42, “Sing to the Lord a new song, His praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants” (verse 10).

I love going to other parts of the world, as I’ve been able to do over the years. I’ve been in South Korea; I’ve been in Pakistan; I’ve been in Mexico; I’ve been in Romania; I’ve been in the former Soviet Union and many different parts of the world, hearing the people of God singing together of God’s salvation—singing sometimes in words that I can’t understand, but I know what they’re singing about.

They’re singing about Christ. They’re exalting God. They’re singing about His triumphant victory over sin and Satan. So we join as we sing, and wherever you sing in your church this weekend, you join with those of every language and tribe and kindred and people around the world as we sing a song of praise to the Lord.

When should we sing to the Lord? Well, 1 Chronicles says, “Sing to the Lord, tell of His salvation from day to day.” Every day.

In Psalm 104, “I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being” (verse 33).

I’m thinking of my longtime, lifelong friend, Dr. Bill Bright. He went to be with the Lord a number of years ago of pulmonary fibrosis, so his last hours and days he was not able to breathe easily at all. But right up to the very end, as deoxygenated as he was, he was speaking and, when he could, singing the praise of the Lord. He wanted with his dying breath to be praising the Lord.

I think about that when I read that verse. As long as I live . . . while I have being—while I have breath, I will sing praise to the Lord.

How are we to sing to the Lord? Psalm 95 says, “Let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation” (verse 1). I’m so glad that verse is in the Bible, because when I sing, it is more noise than music.

My mother had a wonderful singing voice. I did not inherit that. I got my dad’s genes when it comes to singing, but I can make a joyful noise to the Lord.

Psalm 147 says, “Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre!”—a stringed instrument (verse 7). So we sing praise to the Lord. We do it with thanksgiving, and we do it with other musical instruments.

Where should we sing to the Lord? Psalm 149 says, “Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, His praise in the assembly of the godly!” Where are we to praise the Lord? With other believers, with other redeemed saints—those who have been set free—in the assembly of the godly, you’re to sing to the Lord.

We’re not just to watch others sing or listen to others sing in the assembly of the godly. We’re to join in with them in singing to the Lord.

What are we to sing? Again, “Oh sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth.” What is a new song? Well, I think it’s a fresh song. It’s even old songs you’resinging with fresh meaning in your heart.

I love to go back to some of the old songs and sing them as new songs. They’re fresh to me. I’ve had opportunity within the past few days to be singing out of my hymnal to the Lord, and I go back and look at the date. You probably don’t know anybody else who does this, but when I sing hymns in my hymnal, I put the date.

I can go back and see hymns that I sang in 2000 and 2001. When we were startingRevive Our Hearts, there were hymns that were special to me. Now in 2008 there are hymns, some of them, I’m going back and singing again.

They’re not “new” new, but they’re new because I’m singing them fresh to the Lord. They’re songs of His redemption and His fresh mercies and grace in our lives. Those are new songs.

As New Testament believers, we have a special privilege and calling to sing to the Lord. I think about that passage in Ephesians 5—you’re familiar with it. It talks about being filled with the Holy Spirit.

We’re not to be “drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but we are to be filled with the Spirit” (verse 18). Every believer, every child of God, every day, all the time, is to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God. And what will be the expression of that? How will we know if we’re filled with the Holy Spirit?

Ephesians 5 goes on to tell us in verses 19-20: “Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

How can we know that we’re filled with the Spirit? Are we singing to the Lord? Are we speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, rehearsing the deliverance of the Lord, rehearsing His goodness and faithfulness, singing to one another, singing to the Lord?

I received an email not too long ago after one of our Revive Our Hearts conferences, and it really blessed me. This woman says,

I was blessed to be a part of the ROH conference last weekend. I don’t fully have the words to describe how I was impacted by the weekend. God invited me and designed every aspect of the sessions just for me.

I came knowing that I was hungry, thirsty, tired, and desperate, but I left with fresh strength to seek Him with all of my heart, to surrender fully, to let Him use my brokenness for my good, and, more importantly, for His glory.

I will be singing with my WHOLE HEART in worship next Sunday—just one of the ways He has used the events of the weekend.

• I was thirsty.
• I was hungry.
• I was needy.
• I was tired.
• I was desperate.

• He filled my cup.
• He gave me joy.
• He gave me fresh strength.
• He brought me to a place of fresh surrender.

How can you know if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit of God? One of the first evidences, she said, “I will be singing with my whole heart in worship next Sunday.”

Can you imagine how the worship in our churches might be different if we were singing and worshiping in spirit and in truth, conscious of what God has done for us and in us through the power of the cross, the power of the gospel, the great news of God’s salvation?

If we really believed it, if we really understood a fraction of it, if we treasured it and cherished it, wouldn’t we be singing with our whole hearts in worship?

I don’t know when the next time may be when you will be in a public worship service—I hope that you are with God’s people each weekend worshiping the Lord—but I hope that when you do, you will be singing to the Lord with a whole heart.

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts

Leslie Basham: Here’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Sometimes God takes us through difficult places. He doesn’t exempt us from Red Sea experiences, from coming right up to the tippy-toe edge and not knowing how we’re going to get through or how we’re going to survive and then watching Him part the waters. He doesn’t take us around them. He doesn’t help us avoid them. He takes us through those places and preserves us in the midst of them.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Thursday, August 28. When you praise God and sing, the spotlight needs to be on God, not on you. We talked about that yesterday. But people do watch your example in worship. Find out how important your songs are for observers as Nancy continues in a series called Remember Miriam.

Nancy: One of my favorite experiences in recent memory was the night before the National Religious Broadcasters Convention started. It’s held every year. Those of us in broadcast ministry often see friends each year at that event.

The night before it started a couple years ago, some friends got together and said, “Let’s have a hymn sing.” So several of us—actually it ended up being, I don’t know, a hundred or a hundred fifty people—came together in a home in Orlando, Florida and spent an evening just singing hymns together.

We had sent ahead our favorites, those of us who had signed up in advance for it. There were different people who were in Christian broadcasting. I remember Joni Tada there and she sings hymns just as earnestly and eagerly as almost anybody I know. In fact, I’ve been with Joni in a lot of different settings, or a number of different settings, where she’s just broken out into singing hymns. She’s loves to sing to the Lord.

What an incredible evening it was as we came together with others who know the Lord and love the Lord, just singing to the Lord these great hymns of our faith, the hymns of redemption, the hymns of God’s character. We celebrated God’s goodness, God’s faithfulness, His mercy in our lives.

I think about that occasion when I come to Exodus chapter 15, which we’re looking at in this series on Miriam. We come today to a great hymn sing that took place on the outer banks of the Red Sea as the children of Israel had crossed over. God had delivered them out of bondage, captivity in Egypt. They had gone across the Red Sea, which was miraculous. Only God could have made that possible.

Then just as miraculously God had caused the enemy to drown in the sea and they stand on the other side and look back. They think about what God has done. The people of God are free for the first time in 400 years and what do they do? They have a hymn sing.

So we looked at that hymn in the last session. “Moses and the people of Israel,” verse 1 tells us, “sang this song to the LORD, saying, ‘I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.’”

Then we come down to verse 20, which is the passage we started looking at in the last session.

Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron [and also the sister of Moses], took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: "Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”

But another occasion—you read about it in 1 Samuel chapter 18. Let me just read the passage to you. It says,

As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine [Goliath], the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they celebrated, "Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (verses 6-7).

Music has always been an important part of everyday life in Israel. From the time of the Old Testament, it’s been used in celebrations, in weddings, in funerals. Even in war there were special instruments that would sound the call to battle. Music was an important part, and is an important part, of religious life in Israel. Both in their formal worship, in the temple, in services and rituals that God prescribed, and also in other religious occasions, feast days.

You see, for the Jewish mind in the Old Testament everything that happened in life was somehow connected to God. So everything that happened in life was an occasion for music of some sort and good things that happened—blessings, the first fruits of the harvest, the last of the harvest coming in, the special feast days, the Passover. These were occasions for celebration and singing.

Now the Scripture gives us some interesting details here about this hymn sing. We read that Miriam took a tambourine in her hand and all the women went out after her with tambourines. Some of your translations instead of tambourine may have the word timbrel. Do some of you see that in your Bible—the timbrel, the tambourine? It’s the same thing.

It’s a small hand drum, essentially what we think of as a tambourine today. But it would have had a parchment stretched over a wooden hoop and then small pieces of brass or tin that were attached to make a jingling noise. So you hold it in one hand and then hit it with the other hand. It’s a small percussion instrument, a small hand drum but also makes this jingling noise.

It was usually played by women, and it was usually an accompaniment to singing and dancing. In the Old Testament when the tambourine is referred to, or the timbrel, it’s always associated with joy and gladness. It’s an instrument of celebration.

Interestingly, the tambourine was forbidden in the temple, but it was often used at other religious occasions. Feasts and celebrations and triumphal processions, such as the one we just read about with David and Saul and this one at the Red Sea.

There’s something interesting as you put this whole passage together that we’ve been looking at. You see the children of Israel coming out of Egypt and someone just asked me on the break, “Have you ever considered why these women had tambourines with them?” In fact, I have asked myself that very question.

Think about what it was like before the children of Israel as they were coming out of Egypt. In fact, if you go to Exodus chapter 12—just back up a few chapters—look at verse 33 of Exodus chapter 12. It says, “The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, ‘We shall all be dead.’”

So the Egyptians said, “Get out of here! Fast!” Verse 34: “So the people took their dough [this is the Israelites] before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders.” They didn’t even have time for the bread to rise.

So you see that Israel left in a huge hurry in the middle of the night, didn’t even have time for the bread to rise. Is it amazing to you, as it is to me, that the women took time to pack their tambourines? I think it’s astonishing. I read one commentator that put it very succinctly. Miriam expected to use her tambourine.

There was death everywhere in Egypt that night. There was haste. They didn’t know. Again, they hadn’t read the book of Exodus. They didn’t know all that was happening. You think of two million people—you just think of trying to getting your family packed to go on vacation. Then you think about two million people going on—well, it’s not quite a vacation—but exiting the country in a hurry. Yet somehow Miriam apparently expected that the day would come when there would be a hymn sing and she would need to use that tambourine.

You know what that says to me? Be sure to bring your tambourine. Be sure to bring your timbrel. On your journey, your faith journey, your spiritual journey. Though at the moment there may not seem to be any cause for singing or rejoicing or hymn singing or tambourine playing, by faith you know that the time will come when you’ll be able to use that tambourine.

I’m not just talking about literally. I’m honestly not coordinated enough probably to play the tambourine. I don’t have much rhythm in my system, but figuratively speaking if nothing else, know that the time will come when you will be able to lift up praise to the Lord and have every opportunity and occasion to praise Him.

So it says Miriam took a tambourine in her hand and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. As somebody else asked me before we got into this session, “Are you going to talk about dancing?” I said I actually would like to talk a lot more about it and wish I had time to do more study on this, but I’m just going to say a little bit about it at this moment.

In this passage we see that Miriam begins what became an Israelite tradition of celebrating God’s victories through dance. Now there were other means of celebrating those victories but it brings to mind the passage that says let “all that is within me bless His holy name!” (Psalm 103:1).

An Israelite worship dance was often used to reenact the battles that God had fought for them. It’s interesting as you look at some more pagan cultures, you’ll sometimes see and you’ve heard described these war dances that are done before the battle as people are hoping for a victory, trying to work up a victory.

You don’t see the Israelites dancing before the battle. You see them dancing after God has won the battle to reenact what it was like when God sent that victory. I think that this kind of dancing was a way of remembering God’s deliverance. It’s kind of mime—pantomime—just showing what it was like.

You can imagine that some of them maybe were Pharaoh and his army chasing down the Israelites and some were the Israelites. They reenacted the scene as a way of future days and months and years to remind themselves of what God had done and how He had delivered them, but also as a means of teaching their children what God had done and passing their faith on to the next generation.

So I see it as a spontaneous, joyful dance, but I also see it as being an intentional means of capturing our faith. Remember they didn’t have the written Word of God. They had to have oral and verbal and visible means of capturing these faith experiences and remembering them and passing them on to the next generation.

I want to point out three things about the praise that took place in this hymn sing. First, that it was corporate. Secondly, that it was celebrative. Third, that it was Christ-centered praise. Let’s just take a few moments to look at each of those.

First of all this was corporate praise. We’ve seen a progression here of how the Israelites got to the Red Sea and they were faced with this hopeless challenge of the Red Sea in front of them, mountains on either side, the Egyptians breathing down their necks behind them. They were hemmed in.

So they were panicked. They were terrified. Out of their panic they prayed. They cried out to the Lord. So panic turned to prayer. God heard their prayers. God delivered them and prayer turned to praise. Isn’t that often the way the progression is in our lives?

Panic. Then you remember, “Oh, yeah, God’s in Heaven. He’s on His throne. Maybe He can do something about this. We don’t know what to do. We have no hope. But Lord, our eyes are upon You.” Isn’t it true that often it’s the panic places that press us to our knees to pray? But remember prayer will turn to praise as we see the deliverance of the Lord.

So in these verses we see that Moses and the people sang this song of praise to the Lord and that Miriam led the way with her tambourine. But all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. This is a corporate worship experience. This is not a private worship experience. This is two million liberated Jews rejoicing together in what God has done.

I see here when it comes to this matter of worship the power of example. The power of Moses’ example. He influenced the children of Israel and Miriam to praise the Lord. And the power of Miriam’s example as she began to celebrate and to praise the Lord the other women joined in with her.

It reminds me that as you and I lead out in a lifestyle of praise even in difficult or desperate circumstances and certainly at times when we need to be celebrating God’s victories and His triumphs, as we lead out, as we lead the way in praising, others will follow. They will come after us.

Now, if we are slow to praise or if we’re quick to whine, others will follow us in that example also. But I want to be a woman who’s life motivates others to worship the Lord. As Miriam picked up her instrument, then the other women picked up their instruments. Others will join in with you in singing the song of redemption and in playing their instruments of praise as you join in.

Sometimes we wait for others to start the celebration. There may be a time when nobody else is celebrating, but we say, “You know what, though everything is going wrong or though nobody else is celebrating, I’m going to be the first. I will lead out.” Especially as we minister to other women, encouraging one another to remember the promises of God, to celebrate His goodness and His faithfulness in music, in speech and in every way possible.

It’s interesting that Moses and Miriam’s songs are very similar but there is a slight difference. Moses says in verse 1, “I will sing to the LORD.” There’s the singular there. The verb there is singular. When Miriam picks up the chorus in verse 21 she says, “Sing to the LORD,” and it’s a plural word that means all of you sing. All of us sing. So Moses starts the chorus, “I will sing to the LORD.” Miriam picks up with the chorus, “Sing [imperative] all of you, sing to the LORD.”

Graham Kendrick is a worship leader in the United Kingdom, and he points out that in all the songs in the book of Revelation, of which there are many songs in that book, not one of them is a solo. It’s corporate praise. It’s corporate worship. There are 24 elders who sing hymns and cast crowns before His feet. There are myriads of angels. Thousands and thousands of angels.

Every living creature in heaven, in earth and under the earth and all that is in them join together in singing to the Lamb. Those who overcome the beast, multitudes of people and multitudes of angels. People from every tribe, every language, every nation. What do they do? They join together corporately to praise the Lamb.

So it was corporate praise that took place there on the other side of the Red Sea. It was celebrative praise in the second place. Celebrative praise. There are times for singing somber songs. There are times for singing laments, dirges. You have examples of laments in the Scripture, including many in the Psalms. But this was a time not for dirges, not for laments, but for a song of celebration. This is passionate, joyful, exuberant, celebrative music.

The reason is the occasion. The whole event surrounding the exodus, the Passover, the coming out of Egypt, the coming through the Red Sea is a picture and the foundation of the redemption story, and that’s something worth celebrating. You read about this over and over again in the Scripture. You read about it in the Psalms.

Psalm 66 is an illustration. I won’t read the whole thing but it starts by saying,

Shout for joy to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise! Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you. All the earth worships you and sings praises to you (Psalm 66:1-4).

“Come and see what God has done; he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in him, who rules by his might forever” (Psalm 66:1-6).

We need to remember to celebrate God’s miraculous intervention in our lives in the big things and in the little things. His everyday deliverances. His major deliverances.

I look back now on just about 50 years of life and, oh, do I have stories. And you have stories. You need to remember those stories and tell about them and sing about them and praise the Lord for them and not forget them. I don’t ever want to get over the wonder of God’s saving grace, of His redemptive acts.

Then we celebrate because sometimes God takes us through difficult places. He doesn’t exempt us from Red Sea experiences, from coming right up to the tippy-toe edge and not knowing how we’re going to get through or how we’re going to survive and then watching Him part the waters. He doesn’t take us around them. He doesn’t help us avoid them. He takes us through those places and preserves us in the midst of them.

That’s what Psalm 66 says.

Bless our God . . . who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip. For You, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance” (Psalm 66:8-12).

Finally, our praise is Christ-centered—centered on Christ. Now the Jews didn’t know Christ in the way that we have come to know and love Him. So much of what happened in the Old Testament was meant to point us to Christ. In verse 2 as you read the song of Moses, he says. “The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him.”

That word salvation is the Hebrew word Yeshua, the Hebrew name for Jesus. It means salvation. Literally that passage says, “Yeshua, He is my God.” They were proclaiming that Jesus was their God. They had to do it with eyes of faith because Jesus had not yet come. But anticipating the coming of God’s promised Redeemer, they centered their praise in Christ my God.

There’s an old confession of faith called the Belgic confession written in 1561 that describes baptism. It says, “We are saved not by the physical water but by the sprinkling of the precious blood of the Son of God, who is our Red Sea, through which we must pass to escape the tyranny of Pharaoh, who is the devil, and to enter the spiritual land of Canaan.” That’s a beautiful picture and in that sense we celebrate our own Red Sea, that is our baptism into Christ and our life with Him.

So our praise is to be corporate. We are to sing and praise together. By the way, that’s one reason that watching television on Sunday morning of even great preachers is not the same as church. You can hear a lot of great messages on the Internet and radio and television, but there’s something about the people of God coming together physically, corporately to bless the Lord, to praise Him, corporately, celebratively, and in Christ-centered worship.

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.

Leslie Basham: After crossing the Red Sea, the children of Israel witnessed the destruction of their enemies, and then they sang, worshiping God, as Nancy Leigh DeMoss explains.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: He has triumphed gloriously. It’s not the work of our hands. It’s not our efforts. It’s not our plans. It’s God’s power and God’s alone that is to account for the judgment of His enemies and the redemption of His people.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Tuesday, August 26.

Miriam is a biblical character who usually doesn’t get much attention, but her life has a lot to teach you and me about trust and worship. That’s what we’ve been discovering in a series called Remember Miriam. Nancy is here to tell us more.

Nancy: In 1869 there was an event held for five days in Boston that was called The National Peace Jubilee. It was actually in commemoration four years later of the ending of the Civil War. This was a musical extravaganza, and it was the brain child of a particular musician, a music director. He assembled a choir of 10,000 voices that was accompanied by an orchestra that had one thousand musicians in it.

The whole five-day event opened with an ear-splitting rendition of Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” The climax of each day of the five days of the convention was a performance of Verdes Anvil Chorus, which featured one hundred Boston firemen with blacksmith’s hammers who were banging on anvils that were on the stage—a hundred anvils on the stage and they were banging with these hammers, creating lots of noise and showers of sparks—while the thousand-member orchestra was playing and the ten-thousand-member choir was singing. Then added to that, bells from every church tower in Boston chimed in. There were cannons outside the building that were fired in time to the music by a push from a button next to the conductor’s music stand.

It was quite an event. One report on this event said, “The throbbing audience of 40,000 jumped up and down, madly waving programs, flags, fans, handkerchiefs.” Some reported later that they thought they had gone to heaven. “The effect was over-powering,” this report said. One man rushed from the audience and telegraphed his wife, “Come immediately. Will sacrifice anything to have you here. Nothing like it in a lifetime.”¹

Today we’re going to look at another musical celebration that took place many years earlier, and those who were there would say, “Nothing like it in a lifetime.”

Let me back up and give us some setting here. We’re looking in this series at the life of Miriam, although we’ve been taking some detours to look at some other related incidences in and around the life of this woman. We saw in the last few sessions the events surrounding the birth of Moses in Exodus 1 and 2, and realized that Miriam was one of five women who risked their lives to defy the king’s edict to destroy all the baby boys. And you remember that Moses’ life was saved as a result of the courage, the bravery of these women.

He was then adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, and that whole scene in Exodus 1 and 2 is the first of three major scenes that we have in the Scripture that reference the life of Miriam. That first scene was when she was a child around the birth of her little brother Moses.

Over the next few days we want to look at the second scene in the life of Miriam, and it takes place in Exodus chapter 15. If you have your Bible, let me encourage you to be turning to Exodus 15, but before I dive into that passage, I want today to give us some setting and some background on that scene. In order to do that, I want to give you a real quick overview of what happens between Exodus 2, where we left off last time, and Exodus 15, where we’re picking up this time.

You remember that Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s palace in Egypt, and at the age of 40 he is forced to flee from the land of Egypt because he kills an Egyptian that he sees mistreating one of his fellow Hebrews. He flees to Midian where he spends another 40 years in the desert, shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law.

Moses is gone 40 years and meanwhile, back in Egypt, the Hebrews have been slaves, not just for 40 years, but for 400 years, and they are being horribly mistreated. They finally get to a place of desperation, and the Scripture tells us that they cry out for help. Then we see that God hears their groanings, and He remembers His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God says, “I’m going to do something about the desperation of My people. I’m going to deliver them.”

So God, the God of providence, for whom geography is no issue, having seen the desperation of His people in Egypt, appears to Moses in the Midianite desert in the burning bush. After no small exchange, God says to Moses, “I’m going to send you to Egypt, and you’re going to confront Pharaoh, and you’re going to deliver My people out of Egypt.”

Moses goes back to Egypt. He confronts Pharaoh and says, “Let my people go.” Pharaoh gets angry and things get worse for the Hebrews. You have this whole series of the ten plagues, culminating in the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn sons of Egypt, the Passover. God passes over the homes of His people who have the blood sprinkled outside their homes, and God does not kill their firstborn.

The children of Israel are set free. Pharaoh says, “Get out of here.” They do. They escape, the exodus. That’s where the book, Exodus, comes from. The children exit out of Egypt where they’ve been slaves 400 years. They are free at last, except in a very short period of time, they come to the Red Sea, and that brings us up to Exodus chapter 14.

They come to the Red Sea. The Red Sea is in front of them, and then they look behind and realize that the Egyptians have changed their minds, and the Egyptian army, which I read numbered maybe 250,000 soldiers, is breathing down their necks in hot pursuit of the Hebrews. So they are hemmed in.

We’ve heard the story so many times, but I hope you never get tired of hearing the stories of God’s redemptive acts.

So the people are caught here. They’re terrified. They’re in a panic. They know they have no chance. There is nowhere to go. You know the story of how God tells Moses, “Lift up the staff.” God parts the waters. He drives the sea back so that the waters form a great big wall on either side, to the right and to the left, and parts the way so the two million Hebrews can walk through the Red Sea on dry ground.

After the Israelites get through, the Egyptians follow into the Red Sea, hard on the heels of the Israelites, and God throws the Egyptians into confusion; you’ve heard the story before. He causes the chariot wheels to get stuck—some translations even say the chariot wheels fell off. Whatever happened, they ended up in great confusion, and it’s clear that it is God who is doing that. Then, Exodus 14, verses 26-27:

The LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen." So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea.

The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in His servant Moses (verses 26-31).

Now we come to chapter 15, having just read this amazing, extraordinary story of the display of God’s power over His enemies. You have two million Israelites standing on the other side of the Red Sea, looking back on what has just taken place. What do they do? How do they respond? How do you top this? What do you do next?

Chapter 15 tells us what they did next, and that’s a chapter we want to spend the next several days looking at from various angles, but let’s begin by reading the passage, Exodus 15, verse 1: Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD.” The very next thing they do, after all this account we just read—they sing a song. They break out into singing. Spontaneous, exuberant, heartfelt praise, and most of the rest of the chapter tells us what they sang. It gives us the words of this song.

I was thinking about this before I came to the studio this morning and thinking, “Wouldn’t you have loved to have heard what it sounded like?” I mean, were they all singing? It says Moses and the children of Israel sang this song. How did they know what tune to sing, or did they all just make up their own tune and sing? I don’t know.

Was it chaotic sounding? Was it disorderly sounding? Was it organized? They probably weren’t singing in the four-part harmony that some of us grew up singing, but what did it sound like? Whatever it was, it was magnificent, because this is a song that is being poured forth out of redeemed hearts, out of grateful hearts, out of worshiping hearts. This is no staid worship service. This is an exuberant, passionate celebration.

In verses 1 through 12 of this song, they look back on what has just happened, and they tell how God has destroyed their enemies. They realize that it is God who has done this. No one else can take credit, including Moses. Humanly speaking, the temptation would be to say, “Moses, what an incredible leader you are. Man, you put your rod over the river, and the waters parted.”

We would be tempted today to give human, natural explanations for what had happened, but they were there. They knew that there was no natural explanation for what had happened. There was no explanation but God. So verses 1 through 12, they’re looking back and they’re celebrating the overthrow of their enemies. Let’s read it:

I will sing to the LORD for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The LORD is a man of war; The LORD is his name (Exodus 15:1-3).

This is in contrast, by the way, to Pharaoh who had said, “Who is the Lord, and what is His name?” Pharaoh didn’t know who God was, but these people knew who God was.

Pharaoh’s chariots and his hosts he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, Oh LORD, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries; you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.

At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up. [The blast of Your nostrils. I mean, how much energy can that have? Unless it’s God.] At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, “I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.”

That’s what the enemy said. That’s what the Egyptians said. They were proud. They were confident. They were sure they were going to win, but they were no match for God. Amen?

You blew with Your wind. [God blew, the blast of His nostrils, the breath of His mouth.] You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters. [He merely blew, and they were overcome by the sea.]

Who is like you, Oh LORD, among the gods? [The Egyptians were famous for worshiping many gods, but the Hebrews said, “There is one God. There is no god like You.”] Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders. You stretched out your right hand; the earth swallowed them (verses 4-12).

Now, in verses 13 through 18 we have the second stanza, so to speak, of this great hymn. Not only had God destroyed the Egyptian army, but God had delivered and redeemed His people from the hands of their enemies. In this stanza, we read that God has guided His people thus far, and they are confident He will continue to guide them in the days ahead. Let me read, beginning in verse 13:

You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

Now, as they go into verse 14, they realize there are still some enemies yet to be faced, the Egyptians aren’t the only enemies they will face before they get to the Promised Land, but having just seen what they’ve just seen, they are now confident that these other enemies will be no match for God either. In fact, look at verses 14-16:

The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them.

Remember this is true when the two spies went into the Promised Land, into Canaan, and they met Rahab and she said, “We’ve heard the stories what God did at the Red Sea years earlier.” This was true. The news went ahead, and the other pagan nations became terrified of what this God, this unseen God, could do in delivering His people and judging His enemies.

Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm, they are as still as a stone, till your people, O LORD, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased.

Then in verse 17, they look ahead, and they anticipate with confidence the day when they would be safely at home in the Promised Land. Verse 17:

You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O LORD, which your hands have established.

The Lord reigns. That’s the theme of this hymn. As we read that great hymn of faith, we see that God is the hero. Not Moses. Not the Israelites. It’s God. There are at least 45 references to God in those 18 verses. He has triumphed gloriously. It’s not the work of our hands. It’s not our efforts. It’s not our plans. It’s God’s power and God’s alone that is to account for the judgment of His enemies and the redemption of His people. The focus is on God’s works; His power; His redemption. Not on us, or our actions, or our feelings, or even how this really affects us. It’s all centered on God.

I think we need to ask ourselves about our own worship. Is our worship sufficiently God-centered? As you think about the things that we say and sing in our private worship and in our public worship, and of course this was a public worship service, are our thoughts and our words and our songs centered on God, or do they tend to be more us-centered, me-centered?

Look at the pronouns the next time you’re in a worship service and the choruses. It’s not to say there’s something wrong with singing songs like I Love You, Lord and songs that have “I” and “me” and “us.” But if there’s more of those than there are ones that have “You, Lord,” then maybe our worship is not completely balanced.

We want to be God-centered in our worship, and we want to make sure our worship does what this song did, and that is to rehearse and celebrate the story of redemption. What we’re singing, what we’re saying, what we’re worshiping God for is the fact that yes, our enemies are powerful, but God is more powerful than all our enemies. Does our worship highlight the themes of the redemptive story as this song does?

We have a lot more knowledge of the redemptive story than Moses and the children of Israel had in that day. We know how God has not only delivered His people out of Egypt, but God has delivered His people from the power of sin and Satan and self, by the power of the cross.

• We know the New Testament.
• We know about the saving works of God.
• We know about the triumph of God over death and sin and Satan.
• We know about the salvation of God’s chosen ones.
• We know about His divine intervention and His rescue operation, saving us from ourselves and from Satan.

The themes of redemption, basically, are that God judges the wicked and God saves those that He makes righteous, the redeeming work of God towards His people, and the judgment of God. More than half of this hymn is on God’s judgment over His enemies. That may not be a theme we love to sing about, but it’s an important theme because it highlights the holiness of God and the righteousness of God.

When we realize that those who are unrepentant sinners will experience the wrath of God and that Satan, who is the ultimate unrepentant one, has been rendered powerless by what Jesus Christ did at the cross.

All these themes of redemption are so great. It’s the story of the Bible. Micah 7, verse 19, “He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” What happened at the Red Sea is a picture of how our sins have been forgiven, cast into the depths of the sea.

We read in Colossians chapter 2 how God has raised us with Christ from the dead. That He has caused our sins to be taken from us, to be forgiven. He has cancelled that record of debt against us, and then at the cross how He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Christ.

The Red Sea is just an early picture of a whole triumphant work of God’s salvation that we read about throughout the Scripture. We will make it to the Promised Land. We will make it to Heaven.

“‘Tis grace has brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home.”

Does your worship reflect those great themes of redemption?

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: How can somebody who believes in eternal judgment and eternal life say, “We're just going to let our children pick which faith they happen to believe in. There are different faiths, different strokes for different folks”?

You can’t believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and take that position. You can’t save your children. Your faith cannot save your children, but your faith can cause God to work in the hearts of your children in some very significant ways.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Monday, August 25. God brought five different women together at the right time to save the life of the baby Moses. It was an incredible act of God’s providence.

Last week, Nancy explained this convergence while teaching through the first chapter of Exodus in a series called, Remember Miriam. She’ll pick up that series again this week, and we’ll begin with a listener who heard last week’s programs.

Woman 1: I was very moved, being that I’m in the process of studying and listening to a CD, a whole series, on providence. The part that you expounded on about Miriam and the providence that took place in that one or two verses of Scripture just amazed me because I hadn’t pulled all of that together. It’s very edifying to know that God’s providence was taking place through all of this, and it was very uplifting to me.

Nancy: We just need eyes to see the providence of God and hearts to trust that it is happening even when we can’t see it. I think that’s what is the challenge to me from stories like this one.

Woman 1: I was really impressed with the fact of how much more we have to rejoice in with our salvation as against their deliverance from Egypt. When you think about it, it says, “We have been delivered from the power of evil. We are more than conquerors.” We are all of these things in Christ Jesus—we ought to be the most exuberant worshipers of God that could ever be. We should always be reminded of this daily as we go through our life, that we have so much. God is so good.

Nancy: Amen. How can worship be ho-hum when you realize the cause we have for worship?

Woman 1: I was just so encouraged by Jochebed with her child, Moses, having him only three, four years, maybe even less, and it is such an encouragement for young mothers to keep on teaching that little child, even though they may not speak with those early ages. Teach them the truths of Jesus. I’m reminded of a little more contemporary mother—John Newton’s mother—who taught her child the Scriptures.

In the depths of a ship that was about ready to capsize, his mother’s words (which was Scripture) came to his mind, and he called out to God. He was a ruthless slave ship captain, but I just thought, the rewards, we may not see them. His mama didn’t get to see that, but God used that mother like He used Jochebed.

Nancy: Don’t underestimate the importance of those seeds of faith you are planting in the lives of very little children—crucial, huge. So much of that child’s heart and character is shaped by the time they’re five years of age, educators tell us.

I hope you’re not letting the television and videos raise your little ones. I hope that youare the one who’s being intentional about planting seeds of faith and the Word of God and the ways of God into their hearts, their minds.

I have friends who are singing and reading Scripture to their children in the womb, wanting to start that early, and I don’t think that’s too early to start influencing, creating a climate of the Word of God and talk about God and faith. We’re not just talking about taking them to church or putting them in Christian school. I mean, those are good things, but we’re talking about “line upon line, precept upon precept,” (Isaiah 28:10, paraphrase) day after day, when they wake up and when they lie down and go to sleep.

Some of you moms are just questioning the significance and the value of what you’re spending day after day doing. Some days when you feel like you have no adult conversation, no meaningful conversation—that conversation with that two-year-old, that one-year-old, that infant, that three-year-old—that’s meaningful. You will not see the fruit of that right away.

For Moses, it was 80 years before he came back to fulfill his life’s work, and 40 of those years he spent, or almost 40 of those years, spent in the king’s palace getting the Egyptian education. His mother had no control over that.

Listen, if you will monitor and be disciplined and intentional about the areas that you can influence, then you can more easily trust God to intervene in the areas where you don’t have the ability to influence. There are things that your children will be exposed to that you will not be able to control unless you just like, I don’t know, raise them in a closet somewhere.

I don’t recommend that. God’s Word doesn’t recommend that. But as your children are exposed, as they get older, to influences that are not godly, boy, you want to make sure that their hearts are tethered to the Truth, tethered to the faith, that they know who they are and Whose they are.

When Moses got older, Hebrews tells us that he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He despised the pleasures and the riches of what he could have had as a privileged young man, and instead he chose to identify with the reproaches and the suffering of God’s people (see Hebrews 11:24-26).

Where did he get that heart? It wasn’t from Pharaoh’s daughter. I can guarantee you that. It was at the knees of Jochebed.

What were the lullabies she sang to him? What were the prayers she prayed over him? What were the blessings she gave to him while he was there in her home and then while he was in the palace when he maybe had no contact with her for all those years? She was planting seeds, standing by the side, safeguarding, watching over his heart and above it all, God, who was superintending and watching and blessing and causing those seeds to take root and produce fruit.

Woman 1: Another little child is Hannah’s little boy Samuel, who was under Eli, who didn’t do a good job with his own children. She trusted her little boy to live with that man for all his life because she taught him at an early age.

Nancy: God protected, God honored that investment that she had made and protected and gave another child a real heart for God. Yes.

Woman 1: Moses knew who he was. He knew he was a Hebrew. If he had just gone directly into the home of Pharaoh’s daughter, he probably would have thought he was Egyptian. So when he became old enough, he knew his roots, and that’s what was important.

Nancy: You want to make sure that—now you can’t make your children become Christians. You can be born a Hebrew. You can’t be born a Christian, but you want to make sure that your children know that your family identity is one of belonging to Christ and being a part of the covenant of faith, and that they are part of a line who have—if it’s only starting with you—who have believed in God for salvation and that your hope, your earnest hope and expectation is that they will be counted among those who are children of God and who were redeemed by Christ.

You’re not planning for your children to grow up and become unbelievers, Egyptians, so to speak. Your plan, your earnest, your pleading before God, your assumption with your children is you will be followers of Christ.

Now again, you can’t make that happen, but you can sure salt the oats and create an environment where your children are exposed to the riches of God’s grace. I believe there are promises that go to believing parents, that they can hope for God’s redeeming work in the lives of their children. Certainly, we’re not to stand by and say, “Oh, just let them pick their identity, who they want to be and what faith they want to have.”

How can somebody who believes in eternal judgment and eternal life say, “We’re just going to let our children pick which faith they happen to believe in. There are different faiths, different strokes for different folks”?

You can’t believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and take that position. You can’t save your children. Your faith cannot save your children, but your faith can cause God to work in the hearts of your children in some very significant ways.

Woman 1: I’m wondering if we could change the question just a tad. As Nancy was teaching about the life of Miriam, and she was talking about all the places where there was the big “P” for Providence. I’m wondering as you look back over your life, are there moments where, if you had a script of your life, you would put a big “P,” where you saw God intervene, and now—maybe you didn’t see it at the time, but looking back, you see God just intervening in providence in your life and correcting your course or changing it? Anybody have a moment like that?

Nancy: And while they’re thinking about that, does something come to your mind?

Woman 1: The one that popped into my head as you were teaching was about twelve years ago now when God took us out of a ministry position in which we were very comfortable. It was a really scary time because I didn’t know how to perform in that capacity.

Looking back, what God did was strip away everything I knew and just put me in a place where all I could do was say, “God, what am I supposed to be doing today because I don’t know? I don’t know how this works, and I don’t know what You want.” You know,looking back, I can so clearly see God’s hand in it, but at that moment, it was a really scary place to be.

Woman 2: When I was 43 years old, I lost my twin sister to cancer, and it was a very painful time. It’s something you just never completely get over, although I will have to say the Lord was wonderful to me during that time. He just carried me, but since that time, the Lord has given me—and it’s His Providence—some sisters in the faith.

Ann is one, and we met because our children were dating. I was just hoping they’d get married, but it didn’t work out. I cried. I don’t know if Ann cried or not, but the Lord has brought Jim and Ann into our lives to be close, dear, sweet, Christian friends.

She has been an encourager, and she’s made me laugh. We’ve had wonderful times together in the Lord. I think it was God’s Providence that brought us together, and so even though I still miss my twin sister, I feel like the Lord has filled that spot of loneliness. It was His Providence, and I just thank God for that.

Eileen: The providential story about my children is that our third son was born with multiple heart defects. He was the son that my husband wanted. I’m married to a Southerner who—I’m a California girl. You don’t care what your children are, but Southerners want men. So when Christopher was born, there was great rejoicing.

We were living in Nairobi, Kenya at the time. It’s a long story, but providentially, his name was Christopher. God took him home when he was 39 days old, but two months later, I found myself pregnant again, not very happy about that, I must tell you. It was too soon, in my opinion.

We came home on a furlough, and people started saying, “You’re too big.”

I said, “Well, I had a baby very recently, and so it’s just that.”

My grandmother said, “No, you have twins.”

I said, “No, Grandma, I don’t have twins,” but I was told by a doctor in California, “When you get to South Carolina, go see a doctor.”

I’d memorized the verse in James that says, “To him who knows the right thing to do, and he does not do it, it is sin,” (James 4:17 paraphrase) and I thought, “The last thing I want in my life is one more doctor looking at me.”

Anyway, I went, and he looked at me. Of course, I was only going to see him once, so they gave me the youngest guy in the obstetrical group. I know he had just graduated from medical school. He looked at me, and he said, “You’re too big for your due date.”

I said, “You can’t push my due date back. I gave birth to a son in September.” This was due in August.

He said, “You’re right. There’s a multiple birth here,” and in fact, we had twin sons—long story short.

Isn’t it neat that God allowed us to name our son Christopher? Christ gave His life so that we could be saved eternally, but I feel like providentially God gave us Christopher and so many wonderful lessons that we learned from that.

I would never have wanted to miss out on David and Daniel, and you need to know this about David and Daniel. Daniel is like Daniel in the Bible. He is a man of impeccable, godly character.

Our David is a man who’s still on a journey, and what you have encouraged me with today were your words of, “You may see the few things God is actively doing.” Even this week, my heart has been broken again by our David, and so I needed to hear you say, “There are thousands of things He’s doing that you don’t see, Eileen.” So thank you.

Nancy: Someone has said that God’s will is exactly what we would choose if we knew what God knows, and that’s the heart of providence. It’s knowing that God does see, and God does know. It’s trusting His heart when we can’t see His hand.

It’s saying, “Lord, when I can step back in time or eternity and look back on all this, I will see You did all things well, and so now when I’m in the midst of this furnace or this Red Sea or this loss of a child or this oppression of mental, emotional, physical—whatever the enemy is, whatever the obstacle is—I trust that You are here. You are working. You are moving. You are accomplishing Your purposes, that if I knew now what You know now, I would say, ‘Lord, You’re not making a mistake.’”

Now, it is a fallen world, and there are a lot of things that happen that are not what God would have ordered. Death, for starters, was not God’s plan, but in a fallen world where sin has its consequences and where other people’s sins even have consequences on us, and it’s just a broken world. In the midst of that, we have a redeeming God who is making all things new, who makes no mistakes, and who takes, inexplicably, those . . . He causes even the wrath of men to praise Him (Psalm 76:10, paraphrase), the Scripture says.

He takes the brokenness, that fallen-ness, that disorder, that dysfunction, and in His amazing, redeeming power, causes even Pharaohs and Herods and sinful people to end up being instruments that bring Him glory. I mean, we couldn’t do that, but God does.

That is the sense in which He does cause all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28, paraphrase). And what is His purpose? It’s to make us like Jesus. It’s to conform us to His image, and so all of this is part of that process.

That’s why when our eyes are filled with tears, and we don’t understand; we don’t get it; we can’t fathom, and every one of us has some life circumstance, probably right now, that is unfathomable to us. It looks like a knot that can’t be un-knotted, a puzzle that can’t be solved, pieces that can’t be put together. I’m dealing with one right now, and I cannot see any way to put this situation together or make it work or fix it. What do you do? You trust, and you wait on the Lord.

You wait patiently, and you don’t manipulate. You don’t—well, I want to say you don’t whine, although I have done some whining. I will confess. Let’s see, what do you do? You . . .

Woman 3: . . . say, “Thank You.”

Nancy: You say, “Thank You.” You say, “Lord, I will praise You. My mouth will exalt You all the time, regardless of what I feel, regardless of what’s going on. I will bless the Lord at all times.”

You wait, and you let God be God. You say, “In time, I will see, and I will know.” If not in time in this life, then in the next I will see that God was glorifying Himself and was blessing me. God loves us. He does want to bless us, His children, and these things will come to be for our good and for His glory.

Thankfully, we can, most of us, look back on some incidents in our lives where something looked to be hopelessly messed up or confused or mangled at that point, and God gave us enough time and retrospective and perspective to be able to look back and say, “Oh, now I can see.”

Even when we can’t see—in the loss of my father with seven children, ages 8 to 21, and a 40-year-old widow—I’ve seen some things that God has brought out of that that are so good and for which I bless the Lord. But I guarantee there are hundreds of things I’ve never seen yet.

“Eyes have never seen, ears have never heard what God has prepared,” in His Providence, “for those who love Him,” (1 Corinthians 2:9, paraphrase). The things we can see, we thank God for. But we trust, and we wait, and we praise, even in the midst of the times when we can’t yet see what that outcome will be.

Woman 1: For those of us that have done cross-stitch or needlepoint, so many times, and mine in particular, you look to the backside, and it’s all knotted. It is not a very pretty picture. That’s how we look at life sometimes, but God is up here. He’s looking down on that needlepoint picture at what a perfect, beautiful picture it is.

Nancy: Great word picture.

Woman 3: Last night one of my granddaughters called. She was going to do an assignment for her school about interviewing somebody who is either a missionary or has been on the mission field for a trip or whatever, so she called me last night. I was just thinking about this because she was asking me different things that I had learned, and, “Tell me about the trip,”

It was a trip that I’d taken to Honduras. I said, “Allie,”—I was answering her questions, but I said one of the things that came out of that was a precious story of Providence that I was able to share with my granddaughter, teach her lessons, talk about it.

She was saying, “Oh, Grandma, I can’t believe you got to do that! Oh my goodness, I see what God did!”

I went with some of my deaf friends, and we went to Tegucigalpa, Honduras for a trip. The week before we got to visit this one orphanage, this grandmother had brought in a little granddaughter that her mother had abandoned who was deaf.

It was the first deaf child that had ever been at this particular orphanage. One of my friends, her name was Pat, and she is deaf. She was a schoolteacher, and when we got there, she had no children.

When we got there, she met this little girl, Nori, who knew no signs. She had no language capabilities at all, and my friend got down on her knees and taught her to sign in sign language, just to spell her name.

Later on, she came back, asked her husband if they could possibly think about adopting Nori, which they later did. I told Allie,“From that trip, this little girl came to America not very long after that. Now she’s in college. She became a believer. She had a godly family. And on that trip, it wasn’t anything that I did—either thing.”

One of the other women that was with me felt called to go back the next year, started a church for the deaf and later a school for the deaf, finding children and families all throughout Honduras to come. So I said, “Even though I, Allie, I didn’t do those things, I was able to witness.”

I didn’t use the word Providence last night, but that’s what we’re talking about. It was just a neat testimony and a neat time with my little granddaughter to be able to share these things, to give her vision because she just thought, “Woo, you know, one day maybe I’ll go on a mission trip.”

Nancy: Think back to those friends of yours who are deaf, whose parents maybe, at one point, when they realized they had a child who couldn’t hear, may have wondered, where’s God? What is happening in all this? They may have been disturbed or distressed in that. Fast-forward years now and see how God made those friends of yours instruments of blessing and grace in the lives of others. You don’t know—we just don’t know the whole story.

Woman 3: Yes, absolutely. My son was born deaf in one ear, and we didn’t even know it until he was in the first grade. He answered the phone and said, “I can’t hear anything.”

Because of that, I was very open to the Lord about going and learning sign language and then being involved in a church deaf ministry. But at the time, just like you said, Nancy, I just thought, “What is this? What’s happening?” But the good that has come to my life, the friends that I’ve made, the ministries I’ve been involved in because of that one deaf ear.

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: The preservation of Moses’ life didn’t just happen. God was superintending it.

But Jochebed hid that child for three months. She found that ark. She made sure it was watertight. She placed it in a strategic place where Pharaoh’s daughter would come along. She put her daughter Miriam out there to guard it. It was intentionality.

“We’re not just going to turn our children over to the enemy,” was the mindset. “We’re going to do what we can to be watchful and alert.”

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, August 22.

You don’t have to fear, but you do need to raise your children with purpose. Find out how as Nancy continues a series called Remember Miriam.

Nancy: I read a neat response the other day from a mom who was asked what her occupation was. Here’s how she answered:

I am socializing two homosapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition so that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the teleologically prescribed utopia inherent in the saving gospel message of Jesus Christ. What do you do?

They lived out gospel purpose and God’s calling in their lives. As a result, we have been blessed beyond measure, as they became instruments of God’s redemptive plan.

For those of you who have not been with us the last couple sessions, let me give a brief reset here. The children of Israel are slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh has issued this edict that all the baby boys are to be drowned in the Nile.

In the midst of that, one woman who is of the tribe of Levi (her name is Jochebed, though we’re not told that in this passage) becomes pregnant. She conceives and becomes pregnant, and she has a baby boy. All the baby boys are supposed to die.

She looks at this child and says, “This child is precious. I can’t let this child die.” She can’t give this child up to Pharaoh. She won’t give this child up to Pharaoh.

She exercises faith, which delivers her from fear. She hides this child for three months. Then, when she can’t hide him any longer, she puts the baby in a basket in the Nile River, where all the boys were supposed to be drowned, and relinquishes her son.

She could have been fearful, but she wasn’t, because she realized that our lives are not controlled by chance. That brings me back to this subject—I mentioned it earlier in this series—God’s providence. Providence. I’ve often said, I love living under providence.

What is God’s providence? We’re going to see it in spades in this passage. God sees ahead. Pro- vidance: pro = before, voidance = vision. God has vision. He can see things ahead, and He makes provision for what’s coming that only He sees and knows.

You could break the word down this way: Pro-vidence—God’s providence. He provides for what He knows is coming. He’s always orchestrating the circumstances and events of our lives to fulfill His purposes.

As we continue in this account in Exodus 2, I want you to look for evidences of God’s providential hand and care. The thing about providence is that most often you can’t see it when you’re in the midst of the circumstances. You only see it when you look back.

That’s why we need to trust now, when we can’t see what God is doing, knowing that one day we will see and we will understand that God was not oblivious. He was not inactive. He was not asleep on His throne. He was very actively involved, knowing what was going on and working to make provision.

So as we come to Exodus 2, the mother, Jochebed, has put her son in this basket in the river Nile. Verse 4, “His [the baby’s] sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him.”

This is where we’re introduced to Miriam, though we’re not given her name in this passage. This is the first reference to the woman Miriam, who we’re going to be studying over these next several sessions.

Probably she was somewhere between the ages of seven and twelve. She was a girl, a young woman. I see in this a young girl who was watchful. She was alert. After all, she was a firstborn child, and we firstborns are responsible, right?

She’s taking care of things. She’s the big sister. And her instinct, like that of her mother, is to protect. As we see Miriam in this first scene of three that the Scripture records for us in her lifetime, she is learning her first lessons in faith as a young girl.

This incident is going to shape her life. It’s going to shape the woman that she will become. As I think back in my life, I think of incidents in my childhood where I began first to see the hand of God at work; and that’s what was happening to Miriam.

In verse 5 we’re introduced to the fifth of these five women we’re looking at in Exodus 1 and 2. The two midwives; Jochebed, the mother of the baby Moses; Miriam, his older sister; and now we meet the fifth woman— verse 5, “The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river.”

I put a capital “P” next to that part of the passage in my notes here. The fact that Pharaoh’s daughter—now, who was her dad? The one who issued the edict that all the baby boys were to be drowned. That daughter of that man came down to bathe at thatplace in the river at that very time.

Coincidence? I don’t think so. Providence. She “came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds.” Put another “P” there—providence.

She saw this basket. The Nile was a big river—easy to miss something like this. But God had her right at the place and that basket right at the place. Had it floated? Had it just stayed where it was? We don’t know. But wherever it was at that moment, she saw it. That’s providence.

“[She] sent her servant woman, and she took it.” I think there’s providence there, that this servant woman didn’t squeal and turn this baby in or object to the princess taking the baby. This was part of God’s plan, that all these women involved would be part of protecting life rather than destroying life.

Verse 6, “When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying.” Put another “P” for providence there. God knew at what moment to have this baby cry to win this woman’s heart.

“She took pity on him.” Put another “P” there. Providence. The Egyptian women were not schooled to love Hebrew children.

Verse 7, “Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?’”

Now back to Miriam. Here we see that this is a girl who has a good head on her shoulders. She’s got quick response in a crisis. She’s a capable young woman, and we’ll see that play out later in her life. Verses 8-9,

Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, "Go." So the girl went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to [Jochebed], "Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him.

You can’t deny the supernatural element here! There is no human possibility of all this happening. Pharaoh hates the Hebrews. He’s determined to wipe them out.

Apart from the providence of God, the outcome of this story would have been very, very different. There was no human chance of Moses’ life being spared, much less his mother being paid to take care of him, apart from the providence of God.

Now, Jochebed probably only cared for her son for the first two to three years of his life. Hebrew mothers at this point would nurse their children until they were about two or three years old.

So Moses spends those first couple of years of his life nurtured in the context of a family of faith, a believing family. I have no doubt that Jochebed prayed over her son, while he was there and then after he left to go live in Pharaoh’s palace.

But while she had that son, don’t you think she was teaching him his true identity? This is who you are; speaking into his ears, though he could understand so little, the promises of God, the covenant of God; introducing him to the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

You see, Moses was trained in the Hebrew faith long before he was ever introduced to an Egyptian education. And as he grew up and became a man in the palace of Egypt, this early teaching on the lap of his mother was still embedded in his heart. You see here the lifelong influence of this early training he received from his mother.

Verse 10,

When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, "Because," she said, "I drew him out of the water.”

But it was also a prophetic name, because 80 years later, he would be used to draw out God’s people from Egypt to lead them through the Red Sea.

The whole irony—it’s providence, again, that he’s rescued from the river by Pharaoh’s very own daughter and he grows up under the protection of the one who had threatened his existence. Pharaoh had ordered that all the Hebrew baby boys were to be drowned.

But ultimately God would order that Pharaoh’s whole army should be drownedin the Red Sea. You just see God is in charge. Heaven rules.

Now, let me remind you that God may work in your children’s lives in ways that are different than you might expect. I mean, who would have expected that the daughter of the tyrant who wrote the edict to exterminate all the baby boys would have been the means of Moses’ deliverance from that edict?

What does that say to us? Let God write the script. Let Him do it His way.

Now, Moses grows up to be a great man of God as we all know—a lawgiver, deliverer, leader, servant of God, a man of conviction. Don’t we need men like that today? We need those kinds of men.

But let me say, there would not have been a Moses without five women who impacted and preserved his life at an early age. It really is true that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. You see these women being instruments in God’s hands—the midwives, Jochebed, Miriam, Pharaoh’s daughter.

They had diverse backgrounds. Most of them had no clout or political power. Most of them didn’t have a voice. They didn’t have economic privilege. But God used them in a significant way.

Pharaoh saw children as a threat and tried to get rid of them. He thought they were unnecessary, dispensable, disposable. But these women saw children as precious, as a blessing to be protected. Even Pharaoh’s daughter, a pagan princess, saw this child in that light.

These were women who knew how to love. They were women of faith. They were women who were not afraid to intervene. They were willing to get involved.

They didn’t know the long-term ramifications of their choices and their faith and their actions. They were just being faithful in the moment that God gave them.

They were being directed by God even when they didn’t realize it. They were just living out what God put in their hearts. As a result, humanly speaking, these women changed the course of history.

I look at these women and I think, “Oh, God, they were true women. Make us true women.” We need true women today who will be involved in the preservation of life and the furthering of God’s kingdom in many different ways that God chooses to use women today.

Listen, you don’t have to have biological children of your own to have a role in preserving life. Apparently, those two midwives didn’t have children of their own until God blessed them later. But God used those women to help protect other people’s children.

I’m thankful for single women God is using to have an interest and a heart for the next generation. You don’t have to be an older woman. God used Miriam, a young girl. God even used that pagan princess. God can use anybody if they’re willing to be instruments in His hand.

• willingness to have children
• love for children
• sense of responsibility
• protective instinct

• women of courage and conviction who are willing to defy the anti-child system of this world
• willing, if necessary, to risk their own lives in order to preserve life
• women who fear God more than they fear men and as a result are not afraid of unrighteous kings and laws
• women of creativity
• women who are intentional

But Jochebed hid that child for three months. She found that ark. She made sure it was watertight. She placed it in a strategic place where Pharaoh’s daughter would come along. She put her daughter out there, Miriam, to guard this. This was intentionality.

“We’re not just going to turn our children over to the enemy,” was the mindset. “We’re going to do what we can to be watchful and alert.”

But while they were watchful and alert and intentional, they also trusted God to do what they could not do. I love the fact that here you have the most adverse circumstances imaginable when it comes to the matter of children—not a child-friendly government by any means—but you see women who are not frantic, are not panicked and are not fearful.

I find myself sometimes, when I hear what’s going on in the news—I hear about a certain law, I hear about certain elected officials or certain would-be elected officials talking craziness and things that are unbiblical, and anti-God and anti-family measures—and sometimes I want to throw things at the television.

It doesn’t do any good. You don’t see these women being screamers or displaying knee-jerk reaction or panicked. You see them being calm, determined, and trusting women, courageous women.

Here’s something else I notice as I look at these women. This was not a solo effort for any of them. In God’s providence He brought these five women’s lives together.

No human could ever have written this script. Nobody could ever have orchestrated how these midwives and Jochebed and Miriam could ever have gotten together with Pharaoh’s daughter. Only God could have put this together.

But God did put it together “for such a time as this” [see Esther 4:14]. It says to me that there’s value in women banding together, in true women of God saying, “Look, we can’t do this alone; but by God’s grace we will link arms and hands and hearts with other likeminded, like-hearted women to believe God for a movement of revival and reformation in our lives, in our marriages, in our homes, in our churches, and in our world.”

That’s one of the reasons we’re calling women together for True Woman ’08 not too many weeks from now. True women coming together saying, “This is not a solo effort. This is not Nancy Leigh DeMoss Ministries.”

This is true women of God saying, “We’re going to get on our knees. We’re going to seek the Lord. We’re going to live lives together of faith and intentionality, believing God to rescue our generation and the next from the attacks and the assault of the evil one and to set captives free and to raise up young men who will be deliverers that God will use to be leaders, godly leaders, in this generation.”

We need a vision not only for our generation but for the next. And we need to have a mindset that we’re not willing to just surrender our families to the enemy, to capitulate to the demands of the culture.

Listen, our children are far more at risk from ungodly ways of thinking that they’re picking up from culture, from media, from friends, than they are at risk from government policies in our nation today.

The day may come when they’re at risk from government policies—and there are some bad ones. But it’s the unseen things. We have to say, “We are not going to let the enemy have our children. We’re going to be intentional in calling out to God and doing what we can to preserve their young lives.”

Pharaoh’s bloody edict was just one of many satanic attempts throughout history to destroy God’s chosen people. He did it then; he does it today. He wants to attack your family. He wants to attack your marriage, your children, your grandchildren. Satan wants to attack the whole next generation.

That’s why as a single woman I have a burden for the young women, for the young men to get God’s ways and to become men and women of God who can provide godly leadership in their generation.

Satan was trying to wipe out this whole nation so that Christ the Messiah would not be born. And he wants to wipe out the church today. If not exterminating it entirely, then he wants to render it useless, put us on a shelf, get us caught up in the world so that we’re not having an impact on the world.

That’s what Satan wants to do so that the gospel of Jesus Christ will not go out to the world. We’re calling for true women to come together and say, “We’re not going to let Satan win in this world. By God’s grace we’re on the winning side, and we want to see King Jesus reign and rule in this world.”

Listen, when God determines to bless His people as He did in the days of Moses, there is no king and no ruler whatsoever that can cause God’s plan to fail. Whatever men may try to do to destroy God’s people will ultimately become an instrument that God uses for their greater blessing and for the increase of His kingdom.

Pharaoh was plotting for the extermination of God’s people, but God was planning for their emancipation. I think we’re often much more mindful today of the plots of how the world and the culture are trying to snuff out the life of the church and silence Christianity.

But we need to be more mindful of the fact that God is alive. The Holy Spirit of God is hovering over this world, and He is planning for the emancipation and for the shining and broadcast of His glory in this world.

In the battle between God and Satan, true women can play a key role in God’s plan. Pharaoh, the most powerful man of his day, had a plan that he was sure would work. But that plan was defeated by the love, the faith, the courage of five women, including one mother named Jochebed.

Jochebed didn’t know what Moses’ role would be, what his calling would be, what his future would be. She was just a mother who loved her child and exercised faith on his behalf.

And here’s something that struck me: Jochebed did not live to see the outcome of her faith; and you may not either. But take heart, and be sure that God is writing the story, and in the end it will be one that brings Him great glory.

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Do what you can spiritually—praying for your children, training them to be discerning, teaching them a biblical worldview, giving them godly counsel, teaching them to think wisely. Do everything you can do, but when you’ve done what you can do, it’s up to God. You’ve got to parent in faith.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Thursday, August 21.

Do you ever worry what the future holds for your children? Find out how you can be a parent of faith as Nancy continues the series called Remember Miriam.”

Nancy: We’re looking at the five women in Exodus 1 and 2 that God used as a part of His great redemptive story to preserve the life of Moses, who was going to be the Old Testament deliverer of God’s people. One of the things I love about this whole account—and really about the whole of Scripture—is the way you see providence at work.

We’re going to talk more about providence later in this series, but just an initial observation here: As God’s people were suffering under a cruel dictator, God was preparing a deliverer. People didn’t know that. They couldn’t see what God had ahead.

A number of years ago, I was listening to a message by Pastor John Piper, and I heard him say something that has really stuck with me. He said, “In every circumstance and situation of life, God is always doing a thousand different things that we cannot see and we do not know.” It’s true. I’ve reminded myself of that in some seemingly hopeless circumstances, as the Hebrews were facing at this point as slaves in Egypt.

In every season of life—when you can see it and when you can’t—in every season of life, God is always doing a thousand different things that we cannot see and we do not know. He said, “We may see ten or fifteen or twenty things God is doing,” but he said, “God is doing many, many things.”

In this case, God was orchestrating the deliverance, the salvation, of His people. These were desperate circumstances that the Jews were living in. It seemed hopeless. It seemed like Pharaoh was going to wipe out a whole generation of Hebrew young men—which would wipe out the next generation of Hebrews—but no situation is hopeless for God. No situation is too difficult for God.

I want to encourage you. The situation you are facing—some situation you are facing at home, in the workplace, or in your church—may seem hopeless. What we’re facing in our nation today seems very hopeless to me as I look at things. These are desperate and dark times, but we need to counsel our hearts and remind ourselves that there is no situation that is too difficult for God. He is at work. He is orchestrating to fulfill His plans and His purposes.

So what does that mean for us? It means take heart. Be encouraged. Lift up your eyes.Don’t assume that what you can see is the ultimate reality. That’s where we have to be women of faith, and that’s why we can be women of courage. That’s why we can have hope in the most difficult and desperate circumstances.

I hope that word encourages your heart today. Now, let me just reset as we pick up from where we were in the last session.

We saw in Exodus chapter 1 that God used these two Hebrew midwives as part of His plan to redeem His people, to protect His people from destruction. They defied the king’s edict, and they said, “We will not kill these baby boys.” They feared God more than they feared man, and as a result, God blessed them.

Today, as we turn to Exodus chapter 2, we’re going to see a third woman who was used in God’s plan to redeem His people. Beginning in Exodus 2, verse 1: “Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman.” This woman’s name is not given to us in this passage, but if you look at the cross-reference passages in Exodus 6 and Numbers 26, you’ll see that the man’s name was Amram and the woman’s name was Jochebed. They were of the tribe of Levi.

Ultimately, the Levites were appointed by God to be the priestly tribe. At this point when we pick up the story, the man and woman had already married, and they already had two children. Their firstborn was a daughter named Miriam, and their second-born was a son named Aaron. Then verse 2 tells us, “The woman [Jochebed] conceived and bore a son.”

Now, you say, “What’s the big deal? They got married; they had children.” Well, here’s the big deal: Look back at the end of chapter 1. Now, these chapter divisions aren’t in the original text. If you move the chapter division, you’ll see this is an astonishing thing. Two verses earlier, Exodus 1, verse 22, what does it say? “Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.’”

It’s at this point that Amram and Jochebed conceive and have another child. Now, humanly speaking, this is not a good time to get pregnant—when the official law of the land is that all the baby boys who are born will be drowned in the Nile. So as I look at Jochebed, one of the things that stands out to me is her courage, exhibited by her willingness to have children when it was not safe or politically correct to do so.

The true woman—we’re talking about true women this year—the true woman is willing to go against the flow of what is politically correct. And one of the things that is really politically incorrect in our culture is having more children. Now, there’s no law that says you can’t in our country, though there are such laws in other parts of the world. We talked about China’s one-child policy being such a repressing law. But in our country, where the law permits it, our cultural thinking is really opposed to the concept of having multiple children.

People question often in our society the whole idea of bringing a child into this kind of world. There are a lot of fears. I know women experience this a lot, as you think about what’s happening in our world. The dangers and circumstances make it a world of terror, a world where there is a lot of fear, and there are a lot of people thinking, “This is not a good time to have children. Why would you want to bring a child into this world?”

Many women today are ruled by fear rather than by faith. It’s scary to think about bringing children into this world, unless you believe in a God who superintends and overrules and oversees this world. In fact, it’s at just such a time, in my opinion, that godly parents need to be having children.

There are religions in the world that are having lots of children. Now is the time when God’s people need to be having children and training those children in the ways of God. In this way, we influence by means of sending children into the next generation for the glory of God and for the furthering of His Kingdom.

While I was studying this passage, I happened upon an article that was printed in theNew York Times in 1869. The article was entitled “America’s Greatest Necessity: Mothers.” The opening paragraph of the article told about a time when Napoleon was asked—by a highly intellectual, beautiful woman—who he thought was the preeminent woman in all of France.

The woman was a little bit miffed when Napoleon responded, “The one with the most children.” Then it told of another occasion when he told his cabinet ministers that the greatest necessity of France was mothers.

Now, if you know something about Napoleon and what was going on during his era, you know that his motivation for wanting women to have a lot of children was not necessarily the most noble motivation. He was ambitious to control the world, and he felt that how he could do it was by France having lots of children.

This article went on to lament the low birthrates among American women in the mid-1800s. Here’s a quote from that article: “How to preserve her looks and how not to have children seem to be the chief thoughts of women nowadays.” I thought, “Is this 1869? Or is this the 21st century I’m reading about here?” “How to preserve her looks and how not to have children seem to be the chief thoughts of women nowadays.”

The article went on to say, “Maternity has become most unfashionable. The causes are many and easily enumerated, but who will suggest a remedy and save the great American nation from utter annihilation?” In 1869 that was being written.

Well, in this day in Egypt, Jochebed is a courageous woman. She and her husband are willing to have children even when the king has said, “You can’t have children.”

Verse 2 goes on to tell us, in Exodus 2, that “when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.” The New American Standard says there, “When she saw that he was beautiful.” She looked at this baby, and she realized, “He’s a precious child. He’s a beautiful child. I can’t throw him into the Nile.” So she hid him for three months.

You see here the fierce determination of a mother’s love. She’s determined to protect her child, and so she defies Pharaoh’s decree at great personal risk. There were probably officials who were responsible to search out and find pregnant women, make sure that their male children did not live, and punish those who refused to comply. So she goes through this effort to protect her child.

It’s interesting in this verse that it says, “His mother saw that he was beautiful.” In Hebrews chapter 11, there’s a recounting of this passage in the New Testament. It says, “His parents . . . saw that the child was beautiful” (verse 23). Then in Acts chapter 7, there’s another passage that tells us again, speaking of this incident, “He was beautiful in God’s sight” (verse 20).

It’s interesting that the word “beautiful” is used in all three accounts of the birth of Moses. It says his mother saw that he was a beautiful child; his parents saw that he was a beautiful child; but he was beautiful in God’s sight.

I thought, as I read that passage in Acts chapter 7, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. They are precious in His sight.” They are precious in a godly mother’s sight; they are precious in the sight of parents. They look at these little ones, and they say, “This child is beautiful. This is God’s creation. I cannot let Pharaoh or the world take this child away. I can’t let the world have this child’s life. This child belongs to God. This child is precious and needs protecting.”

Now that passage in Hebrews 11, that great chapter on faith, tells us what motivated and enabled Moses’ parents to protect him against all odds. Hebrews 11, verse 23, “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”

Wow! Think about that. It’s amazing to me. They were not afraid of the king’s edict when he said, “Every boy child that is born will be thrown into the Nile”?

I mean, the children already escaped from the midwives because the midwives wouldn’t kill the babies when they were born. And now the king says, “We’re going to throw all the baby boys into the Nile.” And the parents are not afraid? Can you imagine living in that environment and not being afraid of the king’s law? How were they not afraid? By faith.

Jochebed and Amram didn’t have the revelation of God that we have today. There’s so much about God and His ways that we know today. We have His Word. They didn’t have all that, but in their hearts they knew the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They knew that He was a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. They knew that He had made promises to preserve His people.

I think of that promise in Genesis chapter 50 where Joseph says to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land”—the land of Egypt—“to the land that He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (verse 24). Those were Joseph’s dying words: “God will bring you up out of Egypt.” And Joseph’s children passed those words on to their children, and they passed that promise on to their children, and they passed that promise on to their children.

Amram and Jochebed had undoubtedly heard that “God is going to deliver us out of this land. He’s not going to wipe out this nation. He’s not going to wipe out our people.” They believed the promises of God, as few as the ones that they had. They trusted God’s love. They trusted God’s sovereignty. They trusted God’s character. Ladies, in a fearful world, it is faith that will be your protection. By faith, they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

Now you may not be living with a Pharaoh as far as law of the land is concerned, but there may be a Pharaoh in your home. There may be a Pharaoh in your workplace. There may be a Pharaoh in your life who is making life miserable. I want to say that women of God do not have to be afraid.

Horrible things happen. Freedom from fear doesn’t mean that Pharaoh’s edicts don’t happen. Horrible things do happen. Some baby boys did die in that day, as they did in Herod’s day when he ordered the slaughter of all the baby boys two years old and younger (see Matthew 2:16-18). There was crying and weeping heard of mothers who had their children taken from them. But mothers—women of God—do not have to fear in the midst of the most dreadful circumstances. By faith, they were not afraid.

It takes faith to be a wise, fearless woman of God in this world, and that’s what Jochebed had. By faith, she was not afraid. Verse 3 of Exodus 2 tells us what she did after three months: “When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.”

So for three months she hides this baby. Now, in the first three months babies sleep a lot. Right? So it was probably easier for her to hide the baby then. But she finally got to the place where she couldn’t continue to hide him. Babies don’t sleep forever. They cry, and they make noise. Sometimes, try as hard as you might, you can’t keep a baby from crying. The bigger they get, as their lungs develop, their cries get louder. And the point came where she couldn’t hide him anymore.

So she comes up with a plan, and I believe God directed her in this plan—as God will direct you when you don’t know what to do. She makes this basket. The Hebrew word for “basket” used in this passage is used in the Scripture only in this passage and one other place. Do you know where that is? It’s in Genesis chapter 6, where God told Noah to build an ark.

It’s the same word—an ark, a basket. That ark in Genesis 6 was quite a bit larger. It was made of gopher wood, and it was covered inside and out with pitch, which we’re told is this sticky, tar-like substance.

When God wanted to save Noah and his family from the flood that destroyed the world, He gave Noah instructions for how to build this watertight vessel. And when God wanted to preserve His son Moses from the onslaught of Pharaoh, God gave his mother wisdom to build a miniature version of the ark.

The same God who watched over and protected the eight men and women in the ark while the rest of the world perished during the flood—that same God watched over and protected this three-month-old baby boy in that basket, while other baby boys were perishing in the Nile. See how God is able to rescue and to deliver, to save out those that He wants to use for His kingdom purposes?

Now, there were other God-fearing women who lost their sons. Their sons did perish, but when it comes down to it, what we see in this passage is that it’s not about us. It’s not about a particular family or a particular child. It’s about God’s kingdom purposes. As women, we give ourselves to God’s kingdom purposes, and we say, “Lord, whatever they are, I will not fear what man can do to me, but I will trust in You.” This wise, courageous woman lets God show her what to do, and God uses her as an instrument through whom this child’s life can be spared.

I see in Jochebed a woman who did everything that was humanly possible to protect her child. When the time came where she couldn’t do anything else, rather than succumbing to fear, she entrusted her child to God’s care and God’s protection.

We need to remember as we read the story that we know the outcome. We know what happened. We know what comes next. Most of us do, anyway, and if you don’t, come back to the next session, and we’ll fill you in on what happened. But remember, Jochebed did not know the outcome.

She puts this child in this basket into the Nile, and there’s a huge potential for danger there. Think of all the things that could happen—that child could die of starvation, or one of Pharaoh’s thugs could come and find this child and kill this baby boy. There were crocodiles in that river. Your mind can go to all kinds of places, and that’s where you have to ask the Lord to keep you from vain imaginations: to guard your heart and guard your mind as you keep it fixed on Him.

What did she do? She relinquished that child into the river, but more than that, she relinquished that child into God’s hands and left the outcome to God. What else could she do? What else can you do other than relinquish those that you love and your life circumstances and yourself into God’s hands?

Listen, there are people out there—there are forces, there are influences—that want to destroy your children. They want to destroy you, and they want to destroy your family, your loved ones. There’s physical danger. There’s spiritual danger, false teaching, ideology, sinful influences, ungodly friends—all kinds of dangers out there.

First, you need to do everything you know to do to protect your child from dangerous and ungodly influences. Trust in God’s providence does not relieve us from responsibility. Do what you can do. You protect them to the extent that you can. We see Jochebed doing that for those three months, and then she takes that ark and she puts that child in it. She does everything she can.

Be careful what you expose your children to physically. Don’t put them in foolish situations that could be hurtful or dangerous in terms of protecting their minds and their heart. I hear about moms sending their kids off with friends to movies that parents haven’t checked out, sending their kids with friends to the mall—which used to be a safe enough kind of entertainment, but no longer is today.

They are not being careful about their children’s friends, not being careful about their children’s education. Listen, even if you’re putting your kids in Christian school, you need to be watchful. You need to be careful.

I have a friend who has five children. They’re in a good Christian school, but I want to tell you, this mom is watching. She’s listening. She’s seeing what her children are learning, seeing what they’re being exposed to. She’s become a good friend of the principal because she feels responsible to protect her children and to check out the things they’re being exposed to.

Do what you can spiritually—praying for your children, training them to be discerning, teaching them a biblical worldview, giving them godly counsel, teaching them to think wisely. Do everything you can do, but when you’ve done what you can do, it’s up to God. You’ve got to parent in faith, realizing you cannot ultimately be the one to protect your children’s hearts or their minds or their physical bodies. Ultimately, God is their keeper and their caretaker.

Are you praying for your children? Are you trusting them to God’s care and His protection? Listen, God cares for your children more than you possibly could. He loves them, and He’s better able to protect them than you are, as He protected that child Moses. God sees the big picture. God is fulfilling His eternal purposes. He’s glorifying Himself. You can trust Him even when you cannot fathom what He is doing. So wait on the Lord. Exercise faith and be faithful in the midst of what you don’t know.

Used With Permission. Revive Our Hearts.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: The growth of the church, and I don’t just mean the numerical growth, but the spiritual growth, the expansion of God’s kingdom and the adding of new believers to the family of God, this is the grief of the world. The world hates it, and Satan hates it. He levels all his policies and his programs and his powers against the growth of God’s kingdom. There’s a battle.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, August 20. Yesterday, Nancy ended the program in Psalm 90. We’re told this Psalm was written by the man of God, Moses. Today we’ll begin a study of a young woman who served Moses and helped him become a hero of the faith. Nancy begins a new series called Remember Miriam.

Nancy: Well, all this year we’re celebrating on Revive Our Hearts the year of the true woman. We have the True Woman conference coming up not long from now in October in Chicago. We’ve been looking at different women from God’s Word throughout the year and just seeing what God has to say to our lives through the lives of these women.

I’ve wanted for a long time to develop a study on the life of Miriam, an Old Testament character. So as I started to study this preparing for this series, I came to the first incident that is recorded about her life in the book of Exodus. You may want to be turning there as I’m setting this up. Exodus chapter 1.

This first incident, which actually takes place in Exodus 2, is when Miriam was a young girl, and it’s in the events that surrounded the birth of her little brother, Moses. You remember how his life was threatened as a newborn and how God supernaturally spared him. As I got into this study starting to think about Miriam, I realized that Miriam is one of just five women who are part of this scene so I expanded the study.

Before we get into Miriam’s life, I want us to look at these other women as part of our study on Miriam and look at them not just to see what we can learn from their example, but also to understand and see their role and ours in the whole drama of redemption, which is the story of God’s great plan of salvation through all of the Scripture from Old Testament to New Testament.

I want to give us some background and some context for this whole account. Then today we’ll be introduced to the first two of these five women. Over the next few days we’ll look at the other three. So by way of background, looking at Exodus chapter 1, let’s start back at verse 6. “Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation.”

Joseph had been sent into Egypt by his brothers, and his brothers and dad had ultimately joined him there. Joseph and his family had died, but their family had ended up growing up in Egypt. That wasn’t where God intended them to live. Ultimately they were going to be in the Promised Land, but for the time being the people of God are strangers in the land of Egypt.

Verse 7: “The people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” Now this was an evidence of God’s blessing. God was blessing and multiplying His people. He was building a nation through whom He would bless the world by sending a Savior, Jesus Christ. So God blessed them by multiplying them so that they could be a blessing to others.

Verse 8: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Joseph had been a leader in the land of Egypt. He had risen to a place of fame and prominence, but now a new king comes in. He doesn’t know Joseph. He doesn’t appreciate where these people came from or how they got there.

Verses 9-10: “And he said to his people, ‘Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’”

Now Pharaoh, as the king was known in Egypt, has two concerns here. First of all, he perceives the Hebrews to be a national security threat. There are so many of them, if they decide they don’t like us when our enemies come against us, they’ll ally with our enemies and we’ll be in trouble. So we need to narrow down their forces. We need to make sure they don’t become too powerful a force in this land. Furthermore, we don’t want them to escape from the land because they’re a workforce in the land and we can’t afford to be without them.

So Pharaoh decides he’s going to control the population growth of the Hebrews. He institutes a national program to deal with this threat. The program, as we’ll see in just a moment, goes through several phases and each is progressively more aggressive than the first. We see the first phase beginning in verse 11.

Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel (verses11-12).

So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

So then we see a more aggressive policy beginning in verse 15.

Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live” (verses 15-16).

Now we’re told their names, Shiphrah and Puah. It’s not clear which nationality they were. Some think that they may have been Hebrews because why would the Egyptian midwives have spared the lives of these Hebrew children? We don’t know. They were probably not the only two midwives in Egypt. There were millions of people in Egypt and two midwives would not have been sufficient especially for this burgeoning Hebrew population. It’s likely that these two women were in charge of a national network of midwives throughout the land of Egypt.

Now these midwives were likely slaves themselves. This king who gave them this directive held absolute authority over their lives. But look at what verse 17 tells us about these midwives. “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” That’s an incredible verse.

Here’s Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world, and he issues this edict. He says, “Kill the boys.” These two midwives say, “We won’t do it.” You see these women feared God more than they feared what Pharaoh could do to them. But they were more concerned about God’s wrath, which will last for eternity, than they were about Pharaoh’s, which what could Pharaoh do more than kill them? He couldn’t do anything else to them other than kill their bodies. They feared God more than they feared the king.

These two women I’ve come to really admire as I’ve been pondering this passage. They stand in a long line of men and women who reverenced God and had said we will not bow. If the word of the king contradicts the Word of God, we ought to obey God rather than men. The fear of God is what delivered these women from the fear of man.

The fear of God is what delivers us from the fear of man. What can man do to me? If God is for me, who can be against me? It’s a far more serious thing to incur God’s wrath than to incur the wrath of any human being. It’s the fear of God that caused them to disobey the king’s unrighteous law. There are laws that are unrighteous. When the law of man conflicts with the law of God, the fear of God will cause us to obey God rather than man.

Now God had not yet given His law to His people. The Ten Commandments were given in Exodus chapter 20, and we’re back in Exodus chapter 1. So they didn’t have the official written law of God yet. But these women knew that God had forbidden murder. How did they know that? Well, Romans tells us that the law of God is written in our hearts. We have a conscience. These women had a conscience. They knew that it was wrong.

I hear today about people doing certain kinds of things or certain kinds of behavior—nonbelievers—and saying, “I had no idea it was wrong.” The only way you could have no idea it was wrong is if your conscience has become seared. If you have so resisted the light that you have that you end up walking in darkness.

These women knew in their hearts, but it was also possible that they knew because God had revealed from the earliest days that murder was wrong. Remember back in the days of Noah after the flood? God said, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” Genesis 9:6.

These women knew that it was the law of God, one of the very first laws of God, that human life is sacred. It’s to be protected. These were helpless babies—the least of these. But somehow they knew that life is precious, and it’s to be preserved. So they refused to do what the king commanded and they let the male children live.

In verse 18, they are called to account for this. “So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and let the male children live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them’” (verses 18-19).

Now there’s been a lot of discussion by a lot of theologians, a lot of ink spilled over this question. Did the midwives lie to Pharaoh? If so, were they justified in doing that? Well, I’m not going to get into all that except to say as I’ve read a number of commentators on this passage. It’s very possible that what they said was true. This could have been so on various accounts.

First of all, knowing of Pharaoh’s edict:

• The Hebrew women in labor may have delayed calling the midwives until after they had given birth.
• The midwives may have delayed responding to calls to give the women time to deliver the babies and hide them.

Some of you say, “It doesn’t always work that way.”

• It’s very possible that these women just were in such good physical condition that they did have faster labor and that their babies came more easily.
• Above all of that, it’s very possible that God may have supernaturally made their labor quick and easy so that they didn’t need the help of the midwives.

Now there are two outcomes of the women letting the children live and the male babies being born. Verse 20 tells us both of these outcomes. First of all, you read in the middle of verse 20, “And the people multiplied and grew very strong.”

It’s like whatever Pharaoh did, it could not keep these children from being born. He could not keep the nation of Israel from growing and becoming strong and expanding. In spite of all of Pharaoh’s concentrated efforts to limit their growth, God kept blessing. God kept giving them children. God kept increasing their number.

I’m reminded as I think about this phenomenon that when God wants to bless His people, there is nothing and no one that can stop Him. There is no law. There is no king. There is no ruler. There is no husband. There is no congressman. There is no parent.There is nothing that can stop God’s plan when He wants to build His kingdom and bless His people.

That should encourage our hearts, that in the midst of terrifying days, God’s people can multiply and grow strong. In fact, sometimes the church has multiplied and become strong more so in times of persecution. We’ve seen this in the church in China. During the years of communist oppression when the West was not permitted in, the church grew more in those years of terrible persecution than it has in other parts of the world where there is no such persecution.

God can bless His people and cause them to grow strong. God can bless and cause you to grow strong in the midst of very difficult circumstances where everything and everyone seems to be set against that happening.

Then we also read in verse 20, “So God dealt well with the midwives.” “And because the midwives feared God,” verse 21, “he gave them families.” They were rewarded. That’s what Proverbs 31:30 tells us. “A woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” These women feared the Lord and God blessed them. He gave them families.

Now often in that culture women were midwives because they had no children of their own. They would help other women in giving birth. They cared for other people’s children, and in this case, because they did, God blessed them with their own children.

Now at the same time the pressure didn’t stop. In fact, it actually intensified. We see in verse 22 the next stage of Pharaoh’s program of population control. It’s actually a program of ethnic cleansing. He’s trying to get rid of the Jews. This stage is the most aggressive yet. It’s incomprehensibly cruel.

As if what he had already done wasn’t enough, look at verse 22, “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.’” The Egyptians considered the Nile a sacred river. It may have been that they intended to offer the Hebrew children as sacrifices to the gods of Egypt.

The first directive had been to the midwives. Now Pharaoh commands all His people, verse 22. This is a general public order. It was likely that everybody was responsible to tell if a woman wasn’t following these orders. Or those who didn’t tell might face reprisals themselves for not doing so.

Now according to the commentators I’ve read, it appears that this edict was made after the birth of Aaron, who was Moses’ older brother by three years, and that the edict was probably revoked soon after the birth of Moses. So it wasn’t an edict that went a long time. If it had, there probably would not have been 600,000 Jewish men of adult age 80+ years later when they were delivered out of Egypt.

So he didn’t succeed in wiping out a whole generation of men as he had hoped to do. There was this narrow window likely where this edict was in effect. It’s just a reminder that God’s sovereignty overrules kings and rulers and laws. We can beat our heads against the wall about evil rulers, evil leaders, evil laws, and we ought to do what we can to see them changed, but there are times when we can’t do anything except appeal to God who is the One who rules over all these kings and edicts.

Now that’s just a quick view of the story—the what. I want us to take a couple moments here to say something about the so what. What does all this have to do with us? Well, one it reminds us that there’s a battle going on. The kingdom of God versus the kingdom of Satan. Light versus darkness. Life versus death.

Matthew Henry says in his commentary on this passage: “The growth of Israel is the grief of Egypt and that against which the powers and policies of hell are leveled.” He’s saying with Israel growing Egypt is infuriated so all the powers and policies of hell are leveled against Israel.

What was true of Israel in that day I would say is true of the church in our day. The growth of the church, and I don’t just mean the numerical growth, but the spiritual growth, the expansion of God’s kingdom and the adding of new believers to the family of God, this is the grief of the world. The world hates it. Satan hates it and he levels all his policies and his programs and his powers against the growth of God’s kingdom. There’s a battle.

This is not a day that is a friend to grace or to Christ. We see that if you’re going to proclaim the name of Christ today, you got to have thick skin. You got to be willing to take abuse and misunderstanding. But in the midst of that, we see that Satan is always determined to take life, especially the lives of those who might further God’s kingdom and God’s reign and God’s rule in this world.

How does he do that?

• He does it physically, by various means of taking physical life.
  • In some parts of the world it’s means of famine and AIDS and children of AIDS victims.
  • Abortion in our country and around the world.
  • Infanticide in some parts of the world. Ultimately, it’s Satan who’s wanting to take life.
• He does it not only physically. He does it spiritually.
  • Spiritual destruction, deception, the attack on the soul of the next generation.

We see here two midwives who were courageous women. They stood against evil. You think about it. What power did these women have against the Egyptian king and all his forces? And they were puny. But God used these two women—these two courageous women—to thwart the king’s evil plot.

A godly, courageous minority in God’s hands can be used to defeat an evil majority. Don’t forget that when you’re feeling swallowed up, overwhelmed by the majority position, by the laws and rulers and people and leaders and influencers in our nation who are set on evil, don’t forget that God uses courageous women. And women like that can be used to overthrow entire evil empires by God’s grace and His power, not so that we can reign and rule, but for the reign and rule of God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.

Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.