So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, "Every son who is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive." And a man of the house Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi. So the woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank. And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him. Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river. And her maidens walked along the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it. And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him, and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children." Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?" And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Go." So the maiden went and called the child's mother. Then Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages." So the women took the child and nursed him. And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. So she called his name Moses, saying, "Because I drew him out of the water." Exodus 1:22-Exodus 2:1-10
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From the moment of his first breath, death was a very real threat to Moses
because Pharaoh, out of his fear of Israelites, made the choice that Moses along with all the other male children needed to die. When his plan to carry things out quietly through the midwives didn't work he made the choice to just have the people do the killing themselves. He commanded, "Every son who is born you shall cast into the river." (Exodus 1:22) Moses was intended to be drowned in the river just because he was a born a boy and in order to keep him safe, his mother kept him hidden for the first
three months of his life. We don't know the exact circumstances that
caused her to make such a drastic decision, but what we do know is that
she felt that the threat on his life was very real and that she was no
longer able to protect him. She took a papyrus basket, coated it with
tar and pitch, and then, she did what to you or I is the unthinkable-she
said her good-byes and placed her three month old son in the basket.
We can only imagine the tears and the heartache for this loving mother
as she placed the basket containing her precious cargo into the river to
be carried away as she cried out to God,
trusting Him with the outcome of her choice to disobey Pharaoh's command.
It was this choice, this decision at the river's edge, that set in motion
the events that followed, events that allowed Moses to become the man of
God, that we read about today. The events that transpired in the life of
Moses, from the seemingly insignificant, to the most famous.The burning
bush, Red Sea, Promised Land miraculous events, all became possible
because of this specific moment! The moment when a loving mother
placed her baby in the river and entrusted the life of her son into the
care of a sovereign God. She dared to believe that God would, "Make a
way where there was no way." She put her faith in God, trusting that,
"His thoughts were of good and not of evil." She was believing that
God's "plans were to prosper him, and to give him a hope and a future," (Jeremiah 29:11).
It was this choice, this one mother's act of surrendering her son's life to the will of God that
brought about all the miraculous events that followed and that enabled
Moses to have a relationship with God. A relationship that transformed
him into the man of destiny we read about today.
Pharaoh's choice was that the river was to be Moses' grave, but because of the choice of his mother to trust him to God's will that same river became a place of
destiny where God provided, prospered, and caused a future to unfold. A
future that wasn't just about Moses, but a future that encompassed a
whole nation being delivered and set free to worship the Living God. If
you and I want to have a relationship with God like the one that Moses
had, experiencing the miraculous and being used by God to reach this
generation, then we too must come to that moment in time, that place of trusting our lives to the will of our sovereign God. We need to know
and experience that moment of destiny where we are willing to make the choice to trust Him and jump into the river of His will. We need to make the choice to trust the outcome, not to
the plans of man, but to His very capable hands! Only then can we, like Moses, fulfill His will for our lives.
We use words like, "Here I am Lord, use me." as a declaration of
surrender but they are all too often spoken from the safety of the river
bank and because of this, the results that we see are only a fraction
of what they could be. If we want to walk in the power of God and see
the miraculous, Red Sea, Manna-type events in our daily lives the way
that Moses did, then we need to be in the river letting God's will
unfold! According to the Strong's Concordance the name Moses means,
"... drawing out, (of the water)" and comes from a root word that means
"to pull out." It was only after Moses spent time in the river that he
came to a place where he was drawn out from it and thus named Moses.
Moses was a man of destiny who fulfilled the will and purpose of God for
his life, not only because he was literally drawn out of the Nile River
but because as a man, trusting in the will of God, he pulled a whole
nation out of bondage. A destiny he realized only after his own
personal encounter with God before the burning bush, where he was heard
to utter, "Here I am," in response to God's call. (Exodus 3:4)
As believers we need to be a people in the river trusting God to
provide, no matter what the situation or circumstance might be. He can't
draw us out and into the miraculous until we've placed our trust in
Him. Its only when we've left the safety of the bank and entrusted Him
with the outcome that we are truly surrendered. Moses' mother had no
idea what the outcome would be when she made the choice to place her son into God's care and
we can only imagine her plea to God to care for her son as she placed
the basket in the river. She had no idea that God would replace her
heartache with joy and that He would bring her son back to her to love
and care for as His nurse. (Exodus 2:8-9)
The simple truth is that a surrendered life is key to being a man or
woman of destiny and when we make the choice to trust Him; it will always bring about the
miraculous intervention of God!
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