RESCUE THE PERISHING

 

                                                     A Mothers Tender Love

                                          

During the Holocaust of the Second World War, Solomon Rosenberg, his wife, their two sons, his mother and father were arrested for the crime of being Jews. They were placed in a Nazi concentration camp. It was a labor camp and the rules were simple."As long as you can do your work, you are permitted to live. When you become too weak to do your work, then you will be killed. “ 

Rosenberg watched his mother and father being marched off to their deaths and he knew that the next would be his youngest son David, because he had always been a frail child.  Every evening, Rosenberg came back into the barracks after his hours of hard labour and searched for the faces of his family. When he found them they would huddle together, embrace one another and thank God for another day of life. One day Rosenberg came back and didn’t see those familiar faces.

He finally discovered his oldest son, Joshua, in a corner, huddled, weeping and praying. He said, "Josh, tell me it’s not true." Joshua turned and said, "It is true, Dad. Today David was not strong enough to do his work. So they came for him." "But where is your mother?" asked Mr. Rosenberg. "Oh Dad," he said, "When they came for David, he was afraid and he cried. So mum said, `There is nothing to be afraid of, David,’ and she took his hand and went with him."

In Exodus 2:1-10, Moses described the events surrounding his own birth. He was born at a time when Pharaoh had given a decree to the two Hebrew midwives that every newly born male child should be killed (Exodus 1:15-16). However "the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king commanded them” (Exodus 1:17). The king asked them “why have let the boys live?” They tried to hide the truth from him.

The Scriptures commands believers to obey the people in authority (Romans 13:1-7) but not when to obey their command directly violates the word of God. A believer’s fear and obedience to God must come first (Acts 5:29). We cannot do that which God has forbidden, no matter who demands it. That is precisely what these godly women did and God used their faithfulness to preserve his people. What the midwives did was very risky and God rewarded them by giving them families of their own (Exodus. 1:21).

Since the midwives would not do kill the boys, Pharaoh called upon all the people of Egypt to get involved in the genocide (Exodus1:22). He ordered all the males born to Israel to be drowned in the Nile. By so doing Pharaoh wrote his own sentence by his own hard. The whole army of Egypt would later be drowned by God in the red sea (Exodus 15:27-28). Rather than the savior of his people being drowned in the Nile, he was be saved and protected as he grew, by Pharaoh's own daughter in Pharaoh's house. Oh how God must have laughed .

Moses had something special in his favor; he had believing parents. Because they feared God, they refused to murder their son, though obedience might easily have cost them their lives. The fear of God makes the fear of man insignificant. Jochebed’s faith in God set her above the ensnaring fear of man.  She hid Moses for three months and then she realized the boy’s cries would be heard. What she did next is amazing.

She weaved a papyrus basket and coated it with tar and pitch, to water proof it. Then by faith she placed the child in it, put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile and left him to God’s sovereign care. She asked Miriam to watch over him. In literal sense she obeyed the king’s command to put her son into the river.. Here we see the never-give-up care in what seemed like a helpless situation. She would not give in to the idea that it was impossible to save her son.

Her faith was rewarded in an amazing way. God ensured that none other than Pharaohs daughter found baby Moses. She was conditioned by her culture and upbringing to reject the Hebrews, but the cry of baby Moses melted her heart. Indeed the heart of the king is in God’s hands (Prov.21:1). God had this well planned for the deliverance of Moses and eventually his people. He skillfully guided the parents of Moses, the currents of the Nile and the heart of Pharaohs daughter to further his plan and purpose.

When Moses sister saw that pharaoh daughter had taken Moses, she came near and said “shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh daughter agreed and Moses sister went and returned with Moses own mother. Pharaoh daughter said to Moses mother “take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give you your wages”. God arranged for Moses mother to give him the mothers affection and to lay in him a Godly foundation (Prov. 16:22).

It was in these early years that Moses learnt of the God of his fathers (Exodus 3:15) and realized that the Hebrews were his fellow countrymen (Exodus 2:11).  His mother later handed him over to Pharaoh’s daughter. As the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, Moses enjoyed the highest privileges in his education. Stephen said that “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in word and deed” (Acts 7:22). This equipped him to write the first five books of the Bible.

When he was grown he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasure of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward. He persevered because he saw him who is invisible (Heb. 11:24-27). His parents must have had a strong influence on him. We should never underestimate the power of parental influence even early in life.

Jochebed was a woman motivated by a strong faith in the will of a Sovereign God! Her faith was so strong that she was named, along with her husband and her son Moses in God's Hall of the Faithful in Hebrews 11. She needed this kind of faith to accomplish what she did for the Lord and for her son. Remember this woman had no idea what God was doing, she had no idea how the story would end. Part of Gods providence is to trust in him even when we don’t understand his ways.

Moses became a great man of God. He was chosen by God to deliverer his people and he had such a great relationship with God  that He revealed  Himself to him in a way that He did not do to other (Psalm 103:7, Numbers 12:6-8) when Miriam and Aaron spoke against him God fought them on his behalf (Numbers 12).  According to God the only two people who had the ability to make him change his mind were Moses and Samuel (Jeremiah 15:1). 

It is likely Jochebed never realized his son’s potential when he was a baby.  It is also likely that she never got to know in full what God did with the life of Moses. Parents, you never know who you are raising! Therefore, give them the best you have while they are under your care, so that they turn out to be God fearing adults who will live for the glory of the Lord!  They will instill those same values in their children that you have placed in them when that time comes.

When our children become adults and move out, it takes faith to leave them in the hand of God. But, the child who has a praying mother and a past filled with the Biblical training has a solid foundation from which he can grow into a Godly man. Often parents think they have been successful when a child gets a prestigious position or makes lots of money. However, true success cannot be gauged on just a worldly scale. We would rather raise a child who would have none of this world's success, but who know Jesus than to raise a billionaire who will go to Hell when he dies!